Publication Date: 07-25-2025

Happy Gilmore 2 (2025) review

Dir. Kyle Newacheck

By: Steve Pulaski

Rating: ★★

Get your index finger ready. You’re going to be doing so much pointing at your TV screen during Happy Gilmore 2 you’re liable to look like Leonardo DiCaprio in Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood. That’s due to an overwhelming amount of cameo appearances: celebrities, artists, sportscasters, and some of the world’s most accomplished golfers. If it appears that Sandler, who co-wrote this long-awaited sequel, wrote a part for any of his famous friends who asked to be in the film, it’s more-than-likely because that was the case.

Any faithful reader of mine knows I’m not a Sandler fan, save for a mere handful of his comedies and most of his dramatic works. Be that as it may, I’ve grown to see him as one of the ultimate “good guys” in Hollywood. Case and point: I’m a big fan of The Dan Patrick Show. Patrick, a long-time Sandler fan and collaborator, told NFL running back Derrick Henry, also a Sandler fan, he would contact the comedian about putting him in his next movie. Sandler obliged with a video-message for Henry, saying if he rushed for 2,000 yards in the 2025 season, he would get a part in his next movie. This week, in lieu of Happy Gilmore 2‘s release on Netflix, Sandler retracted the bet and said he would put Henry in his next movie, no strings attached.

That alone makes Sandler’s appreciation for people pretty unambiguous. If he routinely was the center of quality comedies, I think he’d be a folkloric figure, up there with Mister Rogers and Tom Hanks among the most unimpeachably perfect people in our world today.

However, unlike many others, Happy Gilmore never stuck out to me as anything other than a mediocre Sandler vehicle. Sure, he might’ve dropped the cloying accents he employed in films like Billy Madison and The Waterboy, but the concept of a manchild, failed hockey player using rage to fuel his golf game was little more than an opportunity for Sandler to scream and shout his way through a movie. The result was light on laughs. I don’t pretend to be in the majority.

Happy Gilmore 2 might break Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F‘s record of being relevant on Netflix for seven days, as opposed to six, but it has all the hallmarks of a modern legacyquel. Simultaneously, it feels like too much and too little, and it revives characters that just look sad in their older age, played by actors hungry for a large streaming check. Ultimately, like so many sequels to popular comedies, it lacks the spirit of its predecessor, which centered around making a good movie and nothing more. So much of this feels akin to a golfer going on tilt to the point of embarrassing himself.

In a speedy prologue, we catch up with Happy Gilmore (Sandler), who went on to have a solid career as a multi-PGA champ. A plethora of unfortunate events led him to retiring early, leaving him broke, drunk, and in need of a lifeline to send his teen daughter (Sunny Sandler) to ballet school. Some sage advice from “Uncle” John Daly, who lives in Happy’s garage, Happy decides to hit the green again, this time with a purpose.

Enter Frank Manatee (Uncut Gems co-director Benny Safdie), the brains behind an extreme golf league, who wants Happy to come aboard. When Happy refuses — even though the younger Happy probably would’ve chomped at the bit to get a piece of the action — Manatee stages a massive tournament between his league and the PGA.

Happy Gilmore 2 is littered with recognizable faces. Happy’s caddy is rapper Bad Bunny. Ben Stiller reprises his roll as Hal L, the self-indulgent leader of a support group for alcoholics; and Haley Joel Osment is a golfer on Manatee’s team. An early sequence, one of the film’s funniest I’ll add too, involves Happy getting back on the course while fellow golfers Eric Andre, Margaret Qualley, Los Angeles Sparks star Kelsey Plum, and Ben Marshall react in horror, amusement, humor, and disbelief.

Also back in tow are both Shooter McGavin, reprised by Christopher McDonald with a refreshingly different approach to the character, and Julie Bowen as Happy’s wife, Virginia. And that’s not even addressing the likes of Post Malone, Reggie Bush, Kevin Nealon, Dennis Dugan (director of the original film), Steve Buscemi, John Farley, Verne Lundquist, Robert Smigel, Rob Schneider, Dan Patrick, Stephen A. Smith, Oliver Hudson, Jack Nicklaus, Jon Lovitz, Boban Marjanović, and Oliver Hudson. And those are just the faces I immediately recall seeing.

The involvement of so many professional golfers — including Bryson DeChambeau, Brooks Koepka, Rory McIlroy, and Scottie Scheffler — suggests that original film has a special place in their hearts, which isn’t nothing. Perhaps they saw Sandler and co-writer Tim Herlihy’s parallelism between the PGA facing off against a rival golf league as one that could occur if/when the dollars make too much sense for the real-life LIV Golf not to challenge the establishment. Someone else who actually cares about this sport can write that piece. My view on the sport of golf is in lockstep with George Carlin’s.

Happy Gilmore 2 throws so much crap at the wall that the laws of probability suggest that at least a few ideas will land. And they do. Beyond the sequence that shows Happy getting his golfing legs under him, the climax is unexpectedly riveting as Happy and his caddy are forced to balance on a wobbly, circular piece of land in order to put successfully. But for every compelling scene in a film predicated on asides, direct callbacks, and cameos, there’s another scene that exists to elongate the runtime and desperately try to get a laugh out of the audience. This is another late Sandler film revolving around the importance of family, and while it’s clearly well-meaning, wrapped up in themes of guilt and carrying on, it’s also about as heavy-handed as your average Fast and the Furious film.

Fortunately, even for those who adore the original, this sequel isn’t offensively bad as much as it is harmlessly stupid. Like most Netflix original movies, it will be a trending topic for about a week before fading into obscurity. The original Happy Gilmore will go on to be quoted in every setting from small gatherings to parties and bars. The sequel, on the other hand? You’ll need to be reminded it exists a year from now, much like Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F, Bad Santa 2, Coming 2 America, and Zoolander No. 2.

My review of Happy Gilmore

Starring: Adam Sandler, Sunny Sandler, Bad Bunny, Christopher McDonald, Haley Joel Osment, Benny Safdie, John Daly, Ben Stiller, Sadie Sandler, Jackie Sandler, Post Malone, Reggie Bush, Kevin Nealon, Dennis Dugan, Steve Buscemi, John Farley, Verne Lundquist, Robert Smigel, Rob Schneider, Dan Patrick, Stephen A. Smith, Oliver Hudson, Jack Nicklaus, Jon Lovitz, Boban Marjanović, and Oliver Hudson. Directed by: Kyle Newacheck.