Maybe all legacyquels are inherently nostalgia bait, but the Happy Gilmore 2 teaser doesn’t seem to know what we’re nostalgic for. The promo materials so far have taken a wistful, sentimental tone at odds with the original film’s charming ridiculousness. Apparently, Happy (Adam Sandler) has actually grown up in the near-30 years since we’ve seen him last. As he says in the new teaser, “I guess I need to update my happy place to something a little more age appropriate.”
Did Sandler take criticisms of his immature manchild characters too seriously? The Happy Gilmore of this teaser has lost his edge, and has been edged out of the co*petition co*pletely. Despite beco*ing a golf legend on par with Tiger Woods, he hasn’t “swung a club in years.” The movie presumably follows his journey of getting back into the game, but by the cheering and celebrating that goes on in the teaser his success is already a foregone conclusion, so why worry? Happy certainly isn’t: once prone to fits of anger, this older version has mellowed out. He leaves breaking clubs to his caddy, Bad Bunny.
Perhaps the fact that the actor’s daughters, Sadie and Sunny Sandler, are co-starring in the movie has something to do with why everything’s so “age appropriate”; fatherhood may have softened both Sandler and his character. There is some signature goofiness to be found in the Happy Gilmore 2 teaser, like Blake Clark’s Waterboy character cameo tweaking his own nipples. (This elicits nothing more than a calm head shake from Happy.) But overall, the clip is light on jokes and heavy on sentiment, much like the first teaser released at Christmas. We’ll see where the tone of the actual movie lands when it premieres July 25 on Netflix.