Um Maluco no Golfe

Okies....here we have the indisputable King of mediocrity but one thing you gotta say for Sandler - they don't come more unpretentious! He delivers what you expect and in HAPPY GILMORE he came up undeniably with his best film!

As the wannabe hockey great in dire need of an anger-management course, Sandler discovers by chance his prodigious golfing talents - but using a hockey stick! In a performance best decribed as R-rated Jerry Lewis, Sandler is a hoot as he takes on Bob Barker, the establishment and Shooter McGavin - golfing's hissable "Mr Smarm" (An Oscar-worthy turn from Christopher McDonald)

Carl Weathers turns in a blinder as Sandler's newly come-by coach with an unfortunate earlier run-in with a hungry croc! If you don't find anything in this film funny, you're a dead person! Like many devotees, we have watched this film countless times - it just improves with age!

This film is the one that introduced me to one of my favorite actors, Adam Sandler. His movies are mostly hit-or-miss gag machines, but this is one of his movies in which nearly every gag works. I almost miss the old Adam Sandler. The old Adam Sandler character would be a man who acts nice, but turns violent and angry when he doesn't get his way. Now he plays a mild-mannered every-man who makes little wisecracks. Not that the latter isn't funny, but the former is what he'll always be remembered for, and this is a perfect example of an Adam Sandler's true comedic side.

Happy Gilmore (Adam Sandler) is a nearly unlikeable loser who after a strangely traumatic childhood, grew up to be a raving, anti-social lunatic, who happens to be obsessed with hockey. He constantly tries out for hockey teams, and proudly holds two league records (Most time spent in the penalty box, and he was the only person in history to ever take off his skate and try to stab somebody). One day, his girlfriend dumps him, he doesn't make the hockey team, and the IRS repossesses his grandmothers house which he grew up in. Soon, he discovers that he has an incredible talent for golf, with a record breaking long drive. Unwillingly taken under the wing of one-handed former golf pro Chubbs Peterson (Carl Weathers), and becomes a golf sensation due to his long drive, and extremely rude behavior, much to the dismay of the leading tour money winner, Shooter McGavin (Christopher McDonald). A bitter rivalry and a race-against-time ensue, as Happy tries to earn back his grandma's house, and beat Shooter.

Happy Gilmore is a movie that I truly adore, and will always cherish. There are many quotable lines, and hilariously random scenes and/or characters. One of the funniest ones is a cameo by Ben Stiller as a cold-blooded orderly at an old folks home, who treats the citizens like inmates. One of the funniest comic bits in any Adam Sandler movie is the sequence in which Happy gets into a fistfight with Bob Barker, the host of "The Price is Right." For some reason, Bob fails to notice the heckler who's most frequently uttered word never fails to affect Happy's game for the worst.

Another hilarious thing about this movie is how many of the characters in the movie manage to play their parts and keep a straight face, even when Happy is assaulting innocent people for the smallest reasons, and cussing out the golf ball when it won't go "home." Happy is one of a group of quirky characters in the film, but much of the humor comes from the reactions of the serious characters, and/or the extras when Happy does something stupid. One hilarious example of this is when Happy repeatedly screams out every word that can't be said on TV, well... on TV. The overall premise of the film is fun, and the film delivers non-stop laughs. Sit back and enjoy the classic Adam Sandler vehicle. I highly recommend this film, and give it 10/10.

It is proudly rated PG-13 for Language and Comic Sexuality. Sex: 4/10 Violence: 5/10 Swearing: 5/10 Drugs: 2/10

Adam Sandler has a very funny movie here that works like no other since Caddyshack. Sandler plays a lazy guy who has to save his grandmother's house from being removed. So, he starts to play golf in a way that only Sandler can. He is also instructed by Carl Weathers (who memorably played Apollo Creed in Rokcy), and wathcing his scenes I had to leave the theater from laughing so much (he had a wooden hand and it always gets knocked off). Sandler knows how to keep people rolling in the ailes, and this proves it. A++

My favorite Adam Sandler movie.

I just think it aligns perfectly with his comic persona. He seems to fit this character perfectly. It's the kind of adolescent silliness that I gravitate toward. I can't tell you how happy I was that my 9 year-old seemed to approve ("That was a very good movie"). And she's way more mature than her old man is.

It's not just the character of Happy Gilmore that's memorable here, but also Shooter McGavin, and Christopher McDonald deserves credit for making the entitled jackass a solid villain. Same for Carl Weathers, and you would think he'd be slumming it here, but he sure doesn't show it.

Best of all? Out-of-Nowhere Bob Barker; secure enough in his celebrity to openly parody it with a free-for-all fistfight.

Tell me "The Price is Wrong, b***h!" isn't one of Sandler's best lines.

In Happy Gilmore, Sandler plays the part of a determined hockey player who doesn't make the team but soon inadvertently discovers that his hockey skills translate very nicely onto the golf green. Until the point in the film where Happy begins playing golf, most of the laughs come from his misfortune (`Happy Gilmore… I called your name, didn't I?' [eagerly] `No, you didn't.' `Oh, well, better luck next year!!'), but it is the conflictive interaction between himself as a self-proclaimed hockey player and the much more formal and (for lack of a better word) high class game of golf that makes up the majority of the entertainment for the rest of the film.

There is clearly a take on the classic odd-couple comedy structure here, as Sandler's vulgar hockey habits collide with the neatness and formality of the golf green, and for the most part, this comedy scheme works pretty well here. Sandler seems to adopt the character of Happy Gilmore with great relish as he displays violent acts of hilariously misplaced aggression, clearly foreshadowing his similar actions as Bobby Boucher in The Waterboy. Indeed, some of the funniest parts of the film come from his lengthy streams of profanity at the misbehaved ball when it doesn't go where he wants it to go (`PIECE!! OF!! MONKEY *beep*!!').

So you have an undeniably entertaining and amusing character who does undeniably funny things, but it is at the logical level that this film falls on its face. Luckily for the movie and for its fans, this is not the most important element of a movie like this. It's not very likely that a slob like Happy, who doesn't make the hockey team, is going to suddenly find himself bringing in thousands and thousands of dollars left and right, and stick to his plan to buy his grandmother's house back. You would think that, having seen that he can make that much money, he would at least have kept going for a while instead of quitting as soon as he had accumulated enough to buy back the house. A noble cause, obviously, but no red blooded American male on the planet is going to just quit the game because he prefers hockey or he hates his lead opponent. But who cares? Sandler delivers the steady stream of laughs as Gilmore with such skill that the comedy of the film far overshadows any such imperfections.

Gilmore himself seems to be a bit overly violent in scenes where it doesn't seem entirely necessary, and there is clearly some overdone product placement, but it doesn't take away from the rest of the film. Mike Meyers made brilliant use of product placement in Wayne's World in such ways that added hugely to the comedy of the film (although he tripped over this technique in Austin Powers 2, when he made it massively over-emphasized and stonily unamusing), and the excessive violence of the Gilmore character is justified (although just barely) by the fact that his imperfect characteristics make his efforts (or lack thereof) to fit in with professional golfers even more amusing. As the pros stand around sipping expensive wine and discussing their respective accomplishments, Happy walks in asking where the pinball machine and the keg are. They want fame and recognition, he wants money and beer (and Virginia, the sexy reporter who fills the role of the obligatory love interest in the typical Sandler film).

There are a lot of scenes in Happy Gilmore that, as much as I personally enjoy the movie, simply fall flat (many of which involve the homeless guy who Happy employs as his caddie, or the nutcase that Shooter McGavin employs to destroy Gilmore's chances of winning the tournament, or anything involving Chubbs' prosthetic hand) but the film succeeds where it is supposed to. Sandler presents Gilmore as a strangely likeable character, despite all of his destructive habits, and the film is peppered with other notable performances, not the least of which are by Carl Weathers as Chubbs, the former golf pro who takes upon himself the immense task of taming the wild Gilmore, and Christopher MacDonald, in yet another brilliantly hate-able role as the immutable Shooter McGavin.

Happy Gilmore is a comedy from Adam Sandler, which means that you already know what kind of movie that you are going to get here, so don't complain if it turns out to be what you expected. Sandler does not make award-winning films, and chances are he never will, but the comedic value of Happy Gilmore is unquestionable. It is, to sum it up just as briefly as movies like this can be summed up, a perfect example of what I like to call Fast Food Cinema. It's a lot of fun, but there's no nutritional value.