Happy Gilmore 2

Director: Kyle Newacheck
Starring: Adam Sandler, Julie Bowen, Christopher McDonald, Benny Safdie, Bad Bunny, John Daly, Ben Stiller, Jackie Sandler, Sadie Sandler, Sunny Sandler, Maxwell Jacob Friedman, Ethan Cutkosky, Philip Fine Schneider, Conor Sherry, Dennis Dugan, Kevin Nealon, Haley Joel Osment, Lavell Crawford, Bryson DeChambeau, Brooks Koepka, Rory Mcllroy, Scottie Scheffler, Will Zalatoris, Eminem, Steve Buscemi, Eric André, Martin Herlihy, Margaret Qualley, Travis Kelce
Running Time: 118 min.
Rating: PG-13

**The Following Review Contains Plot Spoilers** 

★★ (out of ★★★★)  

Netflix's heavily anticipated Happy Gilmore 2 answers the question of whether it's really possible for a comedy classic to go home again, responding with a mixed bag full of more misses than hits. But the real concern was whether it would feel like a reunion and little else, made with the presumption fans would simply rejoice at the whole gang returning after thirty years. 

Now after actually seeing what Adam Sandler director Kyle Newacheck cooked up, we're again reminded of the original's greatness, though not for the reasons they likely intended. Their biggest challenge is following a film that was never about positive vibes or giving us a likable protagonist. It was mean, nasty and hilarious, each scene dripping with an attitude suggesting audiences who rejected it could trouble themselves to a warm glass of shut the hell up. 

While the original aligned perfectly with Happy's rebellious, anti-establishment spirit, this sequel represents something else. Given how decades have passed and characters age and evolve with its fan base, there's clearly a conscious attempt to pull on the heartstrings by taking a sentimentally inoffensive trip down nostalgia lane. But no matter how you frame it, that's just not who Happy Gilmore is. And this results in a middling effort more interested in paying tribute to the original's popularity than staying true to the character's arc.  

Having won multiple tour championships in the 90's, golfer Happy Gilmore (Sandler) went on to have five kids with wife Virginia Venit (Julie Bowen) before retiring from the sport when personal tragedy struck. After losing all his money in a lawsuit, depressed alcoholic Happy now works at a supermarket while his four sons Gordie (Maxwell Jacob Friedman), Wayne (Ethan Cutkosky), Bobby (Philip Fine Schneider), and Terry (Conor Sherry) support him and their sister Vienna (Sunny Sandler), a gifted dancer aspiring to enroll in a Paris ballet school. But after rejecting an offer to join energy drink CEO Frank Manatee's (Benny Safdie) new Maxi Golf league, Happy gets the itch to make a tour comeback in hopes of earning enough to fund his daughter's dream. 

As old friends help motivate Happy to pick up the clubs and improve his game, he's attending a court ordered alcoholic treatment program led by his late grandma's abusive nursing home orderly Hal L. (Ben Stiller). He also contends with returning arch nemesis Shooter McGavin (Christopher McDonald), who's unexpectedly been released from the psychiatric hospital he was committed to after his 1996 Tour Championship loss to Gilmore. But with the non-traditional Maxi Golf threatening the sport's sanctity, Happy will have to defeat Frank's squad and redeem himself in the eyes of his family.

Though we find out about Virginia's death via flashback within the first few minutes, the circumstances surrounding it indicate this film's tone will wildly differ from its predecessor's, at least to start. And while it's a bold choice having Happy accidentally kill his wife with a golf drive, it does provide a justifiable, if overly extreme, explanation for his personal troubles. Uncomfortably teetering between dark humor and tragedy, it's almost as if the writers thought that Happy losing Virginia wasn't enough unless he was solely responsible. 

If much of the first hour finds Happy in dire straits, there is a clever visual gag involving his hiding of alcohol in various household receptacles and funny antics from Steve Buscemi and former golf pro John Daly, who plays "Uncle John," a fictionalized version of himself living in Happy's garage. And despite a failed attempt to convince us Happy having five kids is somehow hilarious, the overall plot of him reigniting his career to help his daughter does make for a solid launching point. 

For all the flak Sandler gets for casting friends and family, both Sunny and Sadie's performances (the latter as a member of Happy's support group) are effective. It's really a reminder that no one would care who Sandler put in his projects they just delivered. Unfortunately, his recent output has been underwhelming enough for complaints like these to keep flaring up.  

After an overlong sequence involving Happy's unsuccessful return to the green alongside a trio of recreational golfers (played by Eric André, Martin Herlihy and Margaret Qualley), the movie sort of turns a corner. Much of that has to do with the great Christopher McDonald's work as Shooter and some spirited appearances from PGA pros Scottie Scheffler, Bryson DeChambeau, Brooks Koepka and Rory Mcllory. Of those, Scheffler fares the best in a meta sub-plot parodying his recent arrest.

This wouldn't be a sequel without Happy again coming face-to-face with Shooter, but the real enemies are Safdi's obnoxious, scene stealing Maxi golf founder Frank and Stiller's Hal, whose brief, uncredited role in the original stole that movie. While his presence here as Happy's treatment counselor is noticeably expanded, the novelty of a seemingly accommodating character revealing himself as an unhinged lunatic is gone.With his mask already off, we're left with this weird guy who's just a run-of-the-mill jerk. 

Ironically enough, Travis Kelce actually comes closer to capturing Hal's phony, disingenuous attitude as a restaurant boss who fires waiter (and Happy's future caddy) Oscar (Bad Bunny). Both of them are highlights, proving how this fares better when incorporating newer faces rather than leaning entirely on callbacks. After a while, so many relatives of deceased characters start showing up that it almost plays like The Naked Gun reboot trailer if it wasn't in on the joke. Newacheck also has an annoying propensity for awkwardly inserting clips from the original, which seems equally pointless for hardcore fans and the uninitiated.                   

Sandler is Sandler in this, but has his moments, even if at times he's going through the motions and the Happy we're watching seems entirely different from the protagonist we remember. But that's probably the point. Aligning him on the side of tradition against this upstart league is a decent idea, but it's mainly to send up the ridiculousness of "extreme" sports and spoof LIV Golf with an insane finale featuring celebrities like Eminem, Guy Fieri, Stephen A. Smith, Post Malone, Becky Lynch and countless others. There must be close to a hundred cameos in this and it's overkill, making you appreciate Bob Barker's iconic appearance in the original that much more.    

We also see the return of those "Happy Place" dream sequences, but with an updated twist that's almost as humorous as anything involving McDonald's Shooter and Haley Joel Osment's tour prodigy turned rival. But perhaps realizing nothing Shooter does could possibly top his bombastic villainy in the previous film, they forego repeating that, opting to take the character in another direction, at least until he vanishes in the second half.

There's a temptation to cut Happy Gilmore 2 some slack since we get what was generally expected under the circumstances. But while many have rightly ranked this at the higher end of Sandler's Netflix titles, a legacy sequel to his all-time best comedy should probably be held to higher standards. Whether this comes down to Sandler waiting too long or just a general lack of quality control, the finished product feels like a misguided attempt at paying homage to the original while abandoning the edgy humor that defined it. That's not to say it isn't still good for some laughs, but they're fewer, even for those approaching this with lowered expectations.                             

Totally Killer

Director: Nahnatchka Khan
Starring: Kiernan Shipka, Olivia Holt, Julie Bowen, Randall Park, Charlie Gillespie, Lochlyn Munro, Troy Leigh-Anne Johnson, Kimberly Huie, Liana Liberato, Kelcey Mawema, Stephi Chin-Salvo, Anna Diaz, Ella Choi, Patti Kim, Jeremy Monn-Djasgnar, Tommy Europe, Nathaniel Appiah, Conrad Coates, Nicholas Lloyd, Jonathan Potts
Running Time: 106 min.
Rating: R

★★★ ½ (out of ★★★★)

There's a scene in Blumhouse's time travel slasher comedy Totally Killer where the protagonist shows a character her iPhone in 1987 and we see the reaction. She's perplexed for a second before studying the strange device and realizing that, yes, she'll be able to work with that. It's brief, but indicative of all the little things the movie gets right with a premise you can actually describe as Back to the Future meets Scream without the risk of false advertising. This exchange is one of many you didn't know you needed, with director Nahnatchka Khan delivering a throwback homage that delightfully shows little hesitation acknowledging its influences. And in extracting all the right lessons from some familiar titles, it actually fares better as sci-fi than teen horror, ultimately excelling at both by making inspired choices.

Hilariously skewering the past by going to unexpectedly sharp places with the humor, it's loads of fun, balancing a variety of memorable characters over two timelines. With strong visual cues and an undistracting period specific soundtrack, we're willing to follow the story wherever it goes, inviting obvious comparisons to the Happy Death Day franchise. Others might also be reminded of 2015's The Final Girls, where the heroine is sucked into a retro slasher to reunite with her deceased mom. But while this is similarly stacked with meta references, all roads still lead back to Zemeckis' '85 classic, though in ways you'd wouldn't necessarily assume.

Thirty-five years ago, Jamie's (Kiernan Shipka) mother Pam's (Julie Bowen) three friends Tiffany (Liana Liberato), Marisa (Stephi Chin-Salvo) and Heather (Anna Diaz) were brutally murdered on Halloween by the masked Sweet Sixteen Killer, who was never apprehended and has now returned to finish the job. Tragedy strikes again in 2023 when Pam becomes the eventual fourth victim and daughter Jamie is accidentally sent into the past via her best friend Amelia's (Kelcey Mawema) time machine, determined to stop the killings before they start. 

Stuck in 1987 and aided by the teen versions of her mom (Olivia Holt) and Amelia's science obsessed mother Lauren (Troy Leigh-Anne Johnson), Jamie enters a far different world than she's used to while encountering a variety of suspects she's quite familiar with. Committed to uncovering the masked murderer before being trapped in the past, she scrambles to prevent her mom's deadly fate, with any rash move potentially causing a ripple effect that alters everyone's lives. 

Writers David Matalon, Sasha Perl-Raver and Jen D'Angelo do an excellent job establishing this small town of Vernon and the mythology surrounding these infamous killings, fleshing out all the current characters' lingering relationships to an event a generation prior. And that's just in the first 25 minutes. Woodsboro comparisons are apt, but this is actually more Hill Valley in terms of familiarizing viewers with people we'll see again in the past when Jamie encounters her younger parents and their contemporaries.

Considering the amount of characters involved and how they'll eventually be incorporated into the past timeline, it's impressive how deftly the script pulls that off, communicating a relatably thematic point about townies who peaked in high school but never moved on. It's also conveyed visually by Khan,  depicting a 2023 Vernon that's far from its vibrant, bustling, neon-infused heyday of yesteryear.

Taking a cue from the Halloween sequels, Jamie's justifiably overprotective mom may have been preparing for the killer's return for over three decades, but that isn't enough, no matter how good a fight she puts up. And while the slasher sequences are par for the course, the killer's screen time is kept sparse enough to really make those appearances count. Facially resembling a mashup between Max Headroom and Beavis from Beavis and Butt-head, the murderer has one of those undeniably iconic movie masks that's not only reflective of the period, but one you'd believe remained in the public's consciousness for decades following the original slaughter. 

Even the time traveling sequence itself succeeds, organically leading into the culture shock Jamie experiences in 1987. It's surprising what's focused on, as the jokes and sight gags make it clear she's not viewing the past through rose-colored nostalgia glasses, but an eye-rolling sense of hopeless resignation and pity. With her exasperated facial expressions and detached, deadpan demeanor, the versatile Shipka is perfect in this role, registering Jamie's disbelief at all the smoking, how girls her age are treated, and the ease with which she's able to just walk into school unchecked and enroll. 

Much of that humor continues throughout, with Jamie even using Marty McFly as her reference point for the town's clueless, incompetent sheriff (Randall Park). With Lauren essentially functioning as the story's Doc Brown, their attempts to stop the crimes carry a handful of unintended consequences that could jeopardize the future. In a clever touch, the film also frequently cuts back to 2023, emphasizing that Jamie's gone missing with a crazed killer on the loose. Aside from some small missteps like the overabundance of sex jokes and a true crime podcast trope, the screenplay's a lot better than it's gotten credit for.

Jamie coming to equally disappointing and uplifting realizations about her parents further solidifies how every character is a product of their time, especially Pam and her Molly Ringwald dressalike mean girl squad,"The Mollys." Just as Jamie needs to process  her mom wasn't who she thought, Pam will learn to begrudgingly respect the new badass exchange student from "Canada." And as good as Shipka is, Olivia Holt proves essential in completing one of the better recent up-and-coming actress pairings. Also helping is that Holt's an uncanny physical match for the younger version of a superbly cast Julie Bowen.

Horror whodunnits are difficult since casual and hardcore viewers tend to think they know all the plays and are more than happy to tell you as much. Taking that into account, this reveal is superior to many in logically checking certain boxes to serve the larger story. It'll all culminate in a tension-filled, uniquely set showdown that injects some gravitational excitement into an already perilous situation. 

Totally Killer reminds us how Back to the Future earned a 'PG' rating upon its release despite containing many scenes that wouldn't meet today's more stringent MPAA standards, or apparently those of a Gen Z teen who travels back to the era. But by tackling the same weird cultural displacement that movie's character did in the 50's, this just might be the closet we'll get to another sequel, minus all the baggage such an attempt would carry.