An awful, manipulative, contrived and mawkish guano.

Rating: Null/10 (1 September 2004)

I want to like Adam Sandler. Maybe I do like Adam Sandler. After all, he was charming in The Wedding Singer, which only just stood up to a second viewing. Then again, for every Wedding Singer, there's a Waterboy - the comedic equivalent of what Jim Caviezel endures in Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ.
Happy Gilmore is unusual because it is one of the few bad films I've actually sat through until the end. So how bad is it? Well, I would be exaggerating if I said that it was bordering on a crime against humanity, but it would be a mild exaggeration. I am unreliably informed that the US dropped copies of the DVD on Falluja to destroy the spirit of the rebels there. It is the sort of comedy that produces a sort of existential pain, a shiver in the soul. It is about as funny as bowel cancer.
The main character is irritating and unpleasant and impossible to feel sympathy for. It isn't enough that we have to root for this idiot, we also have to turn all of his opponents into overblown villains. Quite why a champion golfer would need to descend into villainy to defeat an erratic novice is beyond me, but then, we wouldn't root for Sandler if his opponents were nice guys, now would we?
Then there's the love story, although to call it that is a crime against romance. Basically, Sandler's character bumps into the only female character that isn't his mother, and the two fall in love - because a) he's the hero, and b) she's the only female that isn't his mother. It's enough to make you ram your private parts into a blender.
I can't say whether this is the worst comedy I've ever seen - usually I turn a film off if it makes me want to climb into the oven with a box of matches and a copy of Finnegans Wake - but it is bad. How bad? Toothache on a first date is bad; finding out that every one of your male ancestors had a penchant for little drummer boys is bad (I would imagine); Happy Gilmore is, dare I say it, much, much worse. Only the Marquis de Sade would enjoy watching such a painful film... but even he would feel dirty afterwards.
Score: 2/10 (OK, it should really be 1 out of 10, but since making a comedy about golf is very, very brave indeed, I gave it an extra pip)