Happy Gilmore [VHS]
Heavy-metal golf with Adam Sandler, a 1996 dry run of the wild-man-athlete formula that paid off so handsomely inThe Waterboy. There are some irresistibly funny sequences, although you may hate yourself for laughing at the mean-spirited slapstick. This isn't a classic golf comedy, like the Bill Murray vehicleCaddyshack, but as a hot-tempered would- be hockey player who finds an unexpected métier as a power golfer, Sandler has a short-fuse shtick that's effectively deployed. He's like a punk rocker gleefully out of his element, puncturing the country-club atmosphere by using the fairway as a private mosh pit. The action gets repetitive beyond the midpoint, and a subplot involving Gilmore's lovable grandma and her problems with the IRS is dismayingly sappy. Sandler's iconoclasm is mostly window dressing; there's no conceptual or satirical daring in his kind of "outrageousness." The strong supporting cast includes Christopher McDonald as Gilmore's smug rival on the links, Julie Bowen as a perky publicist, and, in a memorable bout of fisticuffs with our hero, game-show host Bob Barker. Director Dennis Dugan  (Problem Child) himself plays Doug Thompson, the golf-tour supervisor.--David Chute