The Naked Gilmore 2 

In my house growing up, Adam Sandler was a god. For my brothers and I, his 1990s run became part of our lore; with his big three being Big Daddy, Billy Madison, and Happy Gilmore. That last one was especially important because it was related to hockey, our favourite sport. The film's opening montage held a direct relation to our own experiences. When they show Happy playing minor-league hockey, he wears the jersey of Surrey Minor Hockey — a team we all played against. When his dad gets killed by an errant puck, it's at a Vancouver VooDoo game (iykyk). Meanwhile, the friendly giant of the movie, Mr. Larson (Richard Kiel), looked frighteningly similar to our father. We even bought him the "guns don't kill people, I kill people" shirt for Father's Day. He did not find it funny.

When Sandler's derelict brand of comedy wasn't rotting our brains, we were watching the other funniest guy from the '80s/'90s — Leslie Nielsen. It felt like his flicks were constantly on TV, especially The Naked Gun trilogy. I watched these movies countless times, but never in their entirety. They were the types of movies that you'd catch 15 minutes of before having to leave for hockey practice. So, for a long time, I never knew what clips were from which movie. All I knew was that they were hilarious.

With this history, 2025 was supposed to be my golden year. Not just one but two remakes from my childhood. When Happy Gilmore 2 was announced, my brothers and I made a pact: no matter what, we were going to watch it together. They insisted that we go see it in theatres on opening weekend. I tried to explain that it was a Netflix exclusive, but they weren't buying it. They told me to buy tickets in advance. They did not want to miss this.

When the release date finally came, chat, I hate to say it, but I was so disappointed. People say that Sandler has lost his slap shot, but that's just not true. He's had some good late-career movies, like Hustle, Hubie Halloween, Uncut Gems, Murder Mystery, and Sandy Wexler. But Happy Gilmore 2 is not one of them.

Ugh, it pains me to even admit it! When the credits rolled, both of my brothers said they thought it was decent. I just smiled and stayed silent. I knew they didn't want to hear what I had to say. I knew I had to save my pure, unfiltered thoughts for a Peliplat article.

The movie lost me very early on. We get another opening montage, but it's not nearly as quality or as hyper-personal as the original. Then, the story gets set up with Happy killing his wife (Julie Bowen) with an errant drive and that leads him to an alcoholic depression and then he loses his passion for golf and all his money and he's broke and living in a dump house with his five kids and John Daly. I know that Happy's dad died from an errant slap shot, so his wife dying from an errant golf ball is a callback, but if one movie needed less callbacks to the original, it's this one.

But besides the egregious flashbacks to the original movie, I really did not like this aforementioned set-up. Sending Happy back to zero allowed Sandler and crew to completely erase everything that Happy had built from becoming a successful golfer. Instead of putting him on a senior's tour or having him mentor a young pro, they choose to have Happy relearn how to play golf, which was basically the premise of the first movie. I just feel like there were a lot of options they could have gone with where Happy still had to overcome obstacles while building on, rather than destroying, the story they'd created back in '96.

I will say, the Sandman's brand of humour still cracks me up. The gag of how he stashes alcohol in everything he owns had me cackling. His caddy (Bad Bunny) and his caddy's cousin (Marcello Hernández) were a great comedic duo, and their small moments were some of the movie's most memorable. And the returning Hal L. (Ben Stiller) will always get me smirking, even if no line he spoke in the sequel came close to being as funny as, "Well now your back is going to hurt because you just pulled landscaping duty."

However, the part of Happy Gilmore 2 that sent it over the edge from being serviceable to unwatchable was the cameos. My goodness. How many celebrities can you smash into a movie? This one, surely, goes for the record. Yes, the original had cameos, like Bob Barker (what an A-lister!), but this second one? I don't even know where to begin. A million pro golfers, Travis Kelce, Post Malone, Kid Cudi, Reggie Bush (apparently), Becky Lynch and MJF... and notice that none of these people are actually actors (with the sort-of exception of Cudi).

The one cameo that I was hoping to see return from the original was Lee Trevino and he barely made the cut. What a waste! In the original, Trevino has the movie's best running gag. He is aways present whenever Happy does something really embarrassing or bad. The camera cuts to Lee after Happy's crazy antics and Lee just shakes his head. It's so stupid and it's the funniest thing I've ever seen. This is me shaking my head at Sandler for missing such a great opportunity.

The end of the movie plays like a terrible headache. It felt like Sandler and squad were worried about losing the audience's attention, so they threw as many celebrities, flashy colours, and bonkers set pieces on screen as they could to keep us engaged until the end credits. It worked, I guess, but the whole time I wished that Sandler would trust his comedic instincts rather than relying on cringey visual spectacle to keep us watching.

Luckily, The Naked Gun was a much better legacy sequel. I still think that the 1988 original was the best of the series, but at least The Naked Gun felt like it was standing on its own two feet. It took the style of humour from the originals and created something new. Frank Drebin Jr. (Liam Neeson) is following in his father's footsteps, and ready to crack another case for Police Squad. With the help of Beth Davenport (Pamela Anderson), he'll stop at nothing to take down the big bads and their P.L.O.T. Device.

Nielson's comedy was known for its ridiculous pace of jokes. If there was a joke to be made, Nielson would make it. The Naked Gun gets that, and it's loaded with unnecessary and hilarious comedy. Whether that be the Police Squad's cold-case wing being a literal freezer or Drebin and villain Richard Cane (Danny Huston) going off the rails to describe their love for The Black Eyed Peas, this movie's strength is just how many jokes it packs into its 85-minute run time.

My main gripe with The Naked Gun is its plot. I know, you're probably scoffing at me for saying that a Naked Gun movie has a bad plot, but it's true. In the original, when Dreben Sr. goes to the baseball game to sniff out the would-be assassin, I was invested. It was dumb, for sure, but it was also engaging. I was with Dreben as he tried to save the Queen of England's life. When he joined the game as an umpire, it made sense for his mission. It was a silly mystery, but I was still rooting for Dreben to solve it.

In this new instalment, however, the story just drags the movie down. Every time the humour would drop from a boil to a simmer in order to get more plot across, I would sigh. I just didn't care about Richard Cane and his device that turns people into their animalistic selves. Even when Dreben was at the MMA fight, I didn't get the same sense of mystery as in the original Naked Gun. It was during the scenes when the movie totally abandoned its plot, like Dreben and Davenport's romantic ski-chalet getaway with the snowman, that the movie was at its best.

The humour too, although present and good, only ever aroused a chuckle or a smirk out of me. There were a lot of chuckles and smirks, tons even, but no belly-laugh, keel-over, tears-in-the-eyes moments like the original had. No moment came close to matching the humour of Dreben and Jane Spencer (Priscilla Presley) practising safe sex by wearing full-body prophylactics.

So, my golden year became something more of a year of indifference. I don't want to come off as too harsh on The Naked Gun, because I really did enjoy it and I think you will too. It's a funny movie, even if Friendship is still the funniest movie I've seen this year. As for Happy Gilmore 2, man, that was just sad! More like Sad Gilmore. Am I right? Chat? Chat?