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These days Saturday Night Live alumnus Adam Sandler churns out box-office fodder on a more frequent basis than news wires and traffic reports are broadcast on local radio stations. Luckily, Happy Gilmore came before such misfires as Little Nicky and Anger Management, and with a little help from household names (Ben Stiller, Bob Barker and Richard "Jaws" Kiel) and the popular sports of ice hockey and primarily, golf, Sandler has the chance to shine in Universal's idiotic comedy.
It's an opportunity partially achieved by the Brooklyn-born funnyman as Dennis Dugan's film has three stars written all over it from the outset. Happy Gilmore is a violent sociopath who has dreamed of becoming an ice hockey player from his infancy. Unfortunately he is deemed as unskilful at his beloved passion and after he learns that his grandmother's house will be repossessed unless she can come up with $275,000, our destructive hero resorts to the etiquette of the gentleman's game to earn some quick dollars and bail out his treasured relative. Happy's arrogance is both hilarious in a slapstick manner, but his overly aggressive ways also grow tiresome unnecessarily - smashing half a bottle in an attacking fashion cancels out the sincerity of the romantic subplot with Julie Bowen and the genuine sentiment between Happy and his grandma. This sort of mixed characterisation from the protagonist makes for a confusing time - Chubbs (Carl Weathers) is a typical veteran golf teacher with an unusual background (amputated arm by an alligator), Shooter (Christopher McDonald) is a fine posh jock archenemy, and Bowen plays a passive reporter to the standard criterion. Why then does Happy have to have such schizophrenic tendencies? Dugan gives his account of Gilmore's dual personality with two heads-or-tails flashback sequences containing the main characters, but even then he cannot answer the baffling questions about Happy's persona.
One has to remember however that Happy Gilmore is a farcical comedy. Where else would filmmakers be able to showcase a central character with both grossly indecent mannerisms (Sandler's fight with Barker is golden footage for the MTV generation) and a legitimate moral core as conflicting attributes and get away with it? Maybe by casting Adam Sandler in the types of roles he has come to define - nutters.
The extras
Production notes, a trailer and cast and crew biographies.
The summary
Like all Sandler's forays into farce, expect goofy comedy, cringe-making emotion, and slapstick. An entertaining mockery of golfing practices and superciliousness.
