We need Happy Gilmore now more than ever

Yahoo

22-07-2025

Hide your hockey sticks because Happy Gilmore 2 finally hits Netflix this week, and the return of Adam Sandler's anger-prone golfer can't come quick enough.
Released back in 1996, the first Happy Gilmore arrived amid a much different - and arguably much more varied - pop-culture landscape. That year packed a lot in. It gave us action classics like Independence Day, Twister and Tom Cruise's very first Mission: Impossible adventure nestled alongside the latter's Oscar-winning Jerry Maguire, bleak heavy-hitter Fargo and teary The English Patient.
Still, amid all of the "you had me at hello"s, cows stuck in whirlwinds and gratuitous use of still clunky CGI effects, we also got a hearty dose of comedy to help balance things out.
Happy Gilmore was one of those comedies. Landing in February, it marked the mainstream arrival of a burgeoning comedy superstar. Fresh from an all-too-short stint on Saturday Night Live, Sandler had already given us Billy Madison just a year earlier. This goofy comedy about a rich hotel heir forced to go back to high school was a hit, harnessing an equally adolescent fanbase that eagerly followed Sandler from TV to the big screen. However, it wasn't until he found himself on the golfing green wrestling with a one-eyed alligator that this shouty comic truly kick-started his movie career.
The next few years would cement Sandler's status as the comedian for a slacker generation. Like Jim Carrey before him, he delivered a string of hits in an incredibly short time-frame, with quotable classics The Wedding Singer, The Waterboy, Big Daddy, and Little Nicky all released in the space of just four years.
Happy Gilmore is more than just a goofy comedy
That said, it was Happy Gilmore that started things off. Here, Sandler played the film's titular hero: a wannabe ice hockey star who's convinced to use his all-powerful swing on a golf course instead of a skating rink. His goal? To win a pro-tournament's big cash prize and save his grandma's house. Unfortunately, preppy pro-golfer and full-time d-bag Shooter McGavin (Christopher McDonald) isn't having any of it.
Filled with gratuitous visual gags, kinetic frat boy humour and an indelibly disarming silliness, the film marked Sandler out as a star almost from the get go. While Billy Madison had managed to doubled its $10million budget at the box office, Happy Gilmore almost quadrupled it, proving that Sandler was a bankable break-out hit.
As if that wasn't enough, its inability to take itself seriously placed it in stark contrast to the rest of that year's cinema offerings. Don't fancy watching Will Smith punch an alien in its gooey face? See Happy wallop The Price is Right host Bob Barker instead. Not in the mood to watch a human leg being fed into a wood chipper? All Happy battles is a smirking mini-golf clown. Jerry Maguire's stressy work struggles just too much to swallow after a long day? The idea of Shooter McGavin eating pieces of s*** for breakfast is a much more appealing offer.
Its timing in pop-culture history placed it perfectly alongside the arrival of a game changer that upended the medium and helped it bury itself deep into the psyche of a generation, too. Just a year prior, DVDs hit the market, allowing comedy fans to hit play in high-def whenever their fancies were tickled or they just needed a bit of a lift.
The end result helped Happy Gilmore become a well-worn and reliable feel-good classic and a much-needed escape pod during difficult times. Its power has withstood the test of time as well. In 2020, some fans even used Happy's humour to help tap, tap tap them through the pain of lockdown isolation.
With all this in mind, there's no wonder that Happy Gilmore 2 swiftly became one of Netflix's most hotly anticipated releases of 2025.
Will Happy Gilmore 2 inspire more movie comedies?
Cut to 29 years later, and pop culture finds itself in a much different place. Despite newsfeeds pushing us to our daily emotional limits and doomscrolling dominating whatever remaining free time we have left at our disposal, movies are noticeably bereft of levity.
If audiences want morality lessons dished out by superheroes in blue and red tights, we're in luck. If they fancy Brexit-isolation fables mirrored back to us in bloody zombie form, then the multiplex is the place to be. But what happens when we just want to tune in, drop out and forget about life's daily stresses for a couple of hours?
This collective need for a good laugh is a trend that's increasingly making itself known. Indulge in a quick social search about Akiva Schaffer's reboot of The Naked Gun, and you'll see plenty of fans praising humour's long-awaited - and much-needed - return to the big screen.
With this in mind, Happy Gilmore's impending return isn't just good news for movie fans - it's a restorative step forward for audiences in general. Here's hoping others follow in his footsteps.
Happy Gilmore 2 is released on Netflix on Friday, 25 July 2025.