An unhappy viewing experience which sees some rather disturbing material play out under a guise of adolescent comedy.

Rating: 4/10 (4 February 2010)

Happy Gilmore is one of the more distasteful sporting comedies you'll see, a film that tries to take sociopathic behaviour; marital problems; care-home abuse as well as rage and render each of them content that we may or may not find funny. The film's opening sets the tone in both the misjudged humour we'll be spending the next hour and half sitting through and the cold detachment from the piece we'll feel, when a mock home movie is established to be in the capable hands of an individual before they are killed at an ice hockey match. What happens next is the same 'home movie' aesthetic of the sequence, but this time with an 'invisible' shooter of the material. Such a ploy, after establishing a rather nostalgic tone to the piece before horribly killing of the camera operator, sets up the alienation the film has from the real world and will go along way in detaching us from the daft reality of its own – we feel disconnected from the off after
I doubt there are many people in the world named Happy, but Happy Gilmore's Happy Gilmore is named-such, and he's played by Adam Sandler. I think Happy is, in fact, Happy; but the things that make him happy are things that do not necessarily make the rest of us so – it is the same relationship the film has with humour. Happy's life is built around conflict and pain. Throughout the duration of the film he'll be in direct competition with a rival sports star; he'll have a disagreement with some Ice Hockey coaches over whether he makes the team; he'll partake in stylised S&M sessions with one of those automated machines that pitch baseballs in full public view and a wrestling match with an alligator I suppose captures that insane rush for conflict and adrenaline that he so badly craves.
But Happy's chief, overall source for conflict is with the state itself, when it is realised his Grandmother's scenario is that she must leave her house of many-a decade and move into Ben Stiller's prisoner of war camp-like run nursing home because of unpaid taxes. Consequently, big bucks on the pro-Golf tour seems to be the only way in which he can raise said funds. There's something quite pleasant, quite heart-felt about having to take up something new and as difficult as Golf for sake of those close to you, in the sense you're doing it all for them – but Happy Gilmore renders Golf something the lead has to do out of necessity, mocking those that play before taking it up himself and failing to undergo any significant on screen changes in terms of attitude. One wonders whether, at any point, he was ever enjoying what it was he was doing. In taking up Golf, antagonism born out of a rivalry with tour veteran Shooter McGavin (McDonald) arises, as does a friendship with Chubbs Peterson (Weathers) and a tour PR manager called Virginia Venit (Bowen) acts as a love interest.
I think Happy was in love before; his relationship with a girl at the beginning is observed as he talks dirty down an apartment intercom as his girlfriend walks out on him for unspecified reasons. Given his temperament, something that we come to learn more of as the film progresses, I think it may have been because of one or two instances in which he struck her, but the harsh realities of why this relationship is now off is completely ignored when a frat-boy sight gag is inserted into the sequence. Later on, he'll be asked about what happened between them and he'll lie to them that she died. So, are we sort of behind Happy because he wants to help Grandma out? Or are we anti-Happy and his antics because he, quite possibility, beat up his ex-partner a few times? Then again, we probably dislike the character of Shooter McGavin more than Happy – a man that feels Happy is destroying Golf but then contradicts himself in hiring an individual to put Happy off his game. Everything clashes and just ends up being a bit of a mess, systematic of both the film and its content.
Within the universe of the film, Gilmore can complete a round and head onto the next tour stop without ever having to face both the disturbing the peace and assault charges which would surely have been brought against him in the real world. The use of violence and destructive behaviour for sake of laughs is woefully misjudged in Happy Gilmore, turning fits of rage and destruction of objects items of near-slapstick. One sequence sees a fistfight between an elderly man and Happy on the golf course; one that should have ended in the hospitalisation of the elderly man and a jail term for Happy. However,the need for violence-infused laughs wins and this is not the outcome. There's something really distasteful in watching a fight between two people being taken to the level it is when, in reality, one of the two parties would be dead from their injuries.
One wonders what Happy might've done, given his predicament involving his Grandmother, without the sport of Golf. He may have become a foot-soldier to a local crime boss – forever being sent out to break the fingers and arms of those that owe the kingpin money. Happy's describing of swearing, fighting and breaking things as "fun" captures the film's overall tone, and acts as a pass-key for the less informed viewers of the sick spectacle that is Happy Gilmore to additionally have fun – we're even treated to what it's like inside Happy's head, in which a bikini-clad Virginia and unicycle riding midgets rule the roost. For all its stupidity and ineptness, the final insult is that it all boils down to a 'final green' climax, in which very basic rules of Golf are twisted for sheer dramatic effect. A sad and depraved effort.