“You’re all something to me.”

Decidedly less happy this time around, Happy Gilmore 2 falls into the same traps so many long-awaited sequels do. Most of the plot is very similar, many of the jokes are the same, and the number of celebrity cameos gets to be both overwhelming and distracting. It maintains the silliness and the intentional stupidity of the original, and even though the last third basically turns into a real-life arcade, Happy Gilmore 2 stands apart from other recent sequels by maintaining a level of seriousness. It’s a dumb movie, but at least it has heart.

Happy (Adam Sandler) won a few more majors, had lots of kids with Virginia (Julie Bowen) and is living the good life until an errant drive hits Virginia in the head, sending her off to her own forever happy place. It’s a pretty jarring moment, leading Happy to mourn by quitting golf and picking up the bottle. Flash forward 11 years and Happy lives with his daughter Vienna (Sunny Sandler), works at a supermarket and is helped by his 4 meathead boys to pay the rent. Their help isn’t enough to send their sister to ballet school in Paris, costing a whopping $75,000 per year. Happy heads back to the links to win the money.

This is where the movie becomes ridiculous and where cameo after cameo get crammed in, seemingly just so the people can say, “I was in Happy Gilmore!” Some rough golf and his newfound sobriety find Happy back on the tour, playing well enough to participate in a battle between the Tour’s best 5 vs Maxi Golf, clearly poking fun at LIV Golf. Real golfers tag along with Sandler here, and opposing them are a group of cheaters who’ve undergone a very specific surgery so they can drive the ball incredible distances. The Maxi Golf team leader, Billy Jenkins (a hilarious Haley Joel Osment) makes a massive bet with Happy, and I’m guessing you can predict how things turn out.

Despite enjoying the film and appreciating how seriously and positively it depicts Happy’s sobriety, I just kept wishing that it had done less. Even while writing this, I felt like I could just go and on, and that the whole review could’ve been one monstrous run-on sentence had I included everything in the story. Happy Gilmore 2 knows how to hit the fairway and does so consistently; it’s just the short game that could’ve used some work. There are too many swings and misses to ignore. The strokes add up.

“Sometimes it’s better to be lucky than good.”

Rating: 2.5 out of 5