‘Happy Gilmore 2’: Still swinging, but it’s not a perfect shot

If you thought Happy Gilmore had hung up his hockey stick-turned-golf club for good… surprise! He is back. He is older, (kind of) wiser and still absolutely unhinged in Netflix’s raucous sequel to the 1996 comedy.

The film opens with Happy (Adam Sandler) living the dream. Six championships, a loving wife (Julie Bowen, swiftly dispatched via a tragic golf ball mishap), and a brood of kids who inherited his temper and his swing. But when grief turns him into a supermarket-stocking alcoholic, he is forced back into golf to fund his daughter’s ballet dreams.

The first act is a rollercoaster. One minute, you are choking up at Happy’s drunken despair, and the next, John Daly (playing himself, naturally) is chugging hand-sanitiser in his garage.

The middle stretch shines, with Happy’s return to the course and Shooter McGavin’s gloriously unhinged comeback (Christopher McDonald is still a riot). A cemetery brawl between the two is chaotic enough to make the cut.

The third act takes a wild turn with Maxi Golf, a spoof of LIV Golf featuring over-the-top players. It’s here that ‘Happy Gilmore 2’ stumbles, trading heart for chaos. The satire falls flat and the climax feels more like a weaker ‘Dodgeball’ scene than a strong finish.

The sequel piles up the cameos like it’s desperate to break some kind of streaming record. Julie Bowen, Ben Stiller and a motley crew of pro golfers and A-list musicians (yes, Eminem and Bad Bunny, of all people) wander in and out, mugging for the camera and flashing that “Hey, remember me?” grin.

For fans, these moments are both a treat and a distraction, crowding the green until there is barely room for the story to take a swing.

The film also slips on its own banana peels. Some jokes drag like a bad back nine, others fizzle entirely and the sheer volume of references to the first film can feel like a layer cake of nostalgia topped with a little too much frosting.

There are times when you sense Sandler, now capable of truly great dramatic work, holding himself back, torn between honouring his goofy legacy and exploring something real.

Yet, when you’re least expecting it, the film connects with surprising warmth. Sandler’s bond with his on-screen daughter, his playful banter with old foes and those flashes where golf becomes both salvation and circus again. Is it art? No. Is it fun? Sometimes, very much so, if you leave logic at the door and let sentimentality take the wheel.

In the end, ‘Happy Gilmore 2’ is a slightly creaky, chaotic reunion where everyone showed up in golf shoes and no one read the agenda.