Consistently funny, but carried by an over-the-top Adam Sandler

Rating: 7/10 (1 July 2012)

You don't have great expectations of a movie like Happy Gilmore. You see the cast and you realise that how much you will like the movie depends on how much you like Adam Sandler and his antics. Sandler would become a far more rounded actor later on, but at this time he rarely played anything over than a clownish idiot. Here is no different...but most of the time, it actually works quite well in this movie because Sandler takes that shtick to new and sometimes shocking levels. He does all sorts of wildly over the top and absurdly stupid stuff - whacking people off their balconies with golf balls, throwing tax-men out of houses, fighting with celebrities and coaches, threatening rivals with beer glasses. However, most of it works BECAUSE of its absurdity. Even the other characters sometimes get in on it, with Carl Weathers' character melodramatically falling out of a window at one point.
The plot also works as a fairly simple underdog story. Happy Gilmore is a failed hockey player who has to try and get his grandmother's house back after it is repossessed, causing him to take up golf more seriously and face a fancied pro to get it back. However, at a deeper level, the story is all very predictable, replete with the failure, the requisite love interest, the lovable little grandmother, the mentor, the largely humourless golf director and the twisted villain. Nonetheless, the plot does enough to make you get behind Gilmore and laugh as he does absurd things.
The acting is often about as predictable as the plot. Indeed, Sandler largely carries this film BECAUSE he is so over-the-top, with deliciously pig-headed lines of dialogue like "you eat pieces of s*** for breakfast?". I suspect that if he tried to be a bit more understated, the film would not be as funny so we therefore could not ignore the film's otherwise basic plotting and acting as easily. However, basic acting doesn't necessarily mean BAD acting - everybody else, from Bowen to Bay to McDonald to director Dugan, perform their relatively one-dimensional roles pretty well. Even Ben Stiller and Richard Kiel are a nice surprise as the twisted nursing home warden and Happy's old boss respectively, while the fight scene with Bob Barker is hilarious. The likes of Trevino, Lye and Lundquist provide well-known faces and nothing more.
The scenery is quite nice, while I don't take serious issue with the product placement because it makes the tournament a bit more realistic, even if there wasn't any big need for a SUBWAY ad. The music used was also good.
Ultimately, the film's basic nature DOES mean that I can't rank Happy Gilmore as being anything more than an above-average comedy despite it being consistently funny. I would also not recommend it for those who dislike Sandler. However, I would recommend it for most other people.
3.5/5 stars
P.S: Some of the deleted scenes are as good as the rest of the film.