Why "Happy Gilmore" Remains Sandler's Best Film 20 Years Later

Adam Sandler

Nowadays, it becomes difficult to find anyone willing to admit that they like Adam Sandler. With his notoriety for diminishing returns, it is hard to even admit that he was once funny and one of the biggest box office draws in comedy. It's partially what makes it exciting to revisit director Dennis Dugan's Happy Gilmore after 20 years and wonder why it's resonated to the point that even Sandler's production company (Happy Madison) is in part named for this film. It could be that he was the young and hungry actor who was catapulted from Saturday Night Live after a short but memorable run. However, it's likely because he still had something to prove. Following the less successful Billy Madison the year prior, Sandler did the unthinkable by making a golf comedy that became his career best. 

One could make a strong argument that Sandler's early career is based largely on an infatuation with comedian Rodney Dangerfield. The one liner-slinging joker was never a great actor, but he was a top notch personality whose "I get no respect." catchphrase pretty much defined him as the underdog. While mostly through osmosis, Sandler's first two films were in some ways his tributes to Dangerfield. Billy Madison was Back to School, and Happy Gilmore was Caddyshack. Borrowing the slapstick and wit that made Dangerfield's work so revered, Sandler applied it to his angry Jewish kid persona and became one of the funniest men alive, if just for a few more years (or longer depending on your tastes). It is then ironic that most would consider that his turning point came with Little Nicky: a film that actually starred Dangerfield in a supporting role.

But in 1996, the tropes of Sandler's comedy was still new. Following his time on Saturday Night Live and a series of other cameo roles, he finally began making his own movies and came out with a certain ingenuity. Happy Gilmore was a story about a hockey player forced to play golf. It's as crazy as they come and applying it to a dull-as-nails sport meant that it would be subversive enough to just might work. With a 70's rock soundtrack and presence from future longtime collaborators (Dugan, Allen Covert, Robert Smigel) meant that we were seeing the birth to his formula. Much like lightning in a bottle, one cannot help but feel that we were witnessing something special. To witness the brilliant Bob Barker cameo or Sandler's rhyming taunt is to perfectly embody its nihilistic, rebellious era.

The major difference between Sandler in 1996 and post-millennium is possibly his own popularity. Nowadays, he gets accused of his movies being nothing but paid vacations. In Happy Gilmore, he pretty much lampoons the wealthy mindset in a way that parallels that of his audience: middle class America. His audience doesn't care about golf and find catharsis in doing jokes whose sole purpose is to be as confusing as possible. But what is possibly the biggest difference from every other Sandler movie and this is that he gets a deeper character, at least within a comedy sense. 

The plot is simple: Happy must win back his grandmother's house, and he does so through golf with assistance of a black mentor with a wooden hand named Chubbs (Carl Weathers). His enemy is an elitist named Shooter McGavin (Christopher McDonald, also in a career-defining role) who is too traditional to fall for Happy's choice to turn golf into a raucous celebration. Add in a love interest (Julie Bowen), and you have every piece to make an underdog story that is as much parody as it is reverent. It is true that Happy saves the day, but his road is paved with the familiar struggles of failure, public brawls, and a sense that the sport itself is important. It also helps if you have a Subway sponsorship (a technique that's comical here, yet Sandler's reliance on product placement has become crass in later years). 

There's nothing sacrificed in what Sandler would offer anyway. He has those physical comedy moments where he angrily attacks the crowd and yells at his ball. It is also his most quotable movie, filtering out the pretensions of the sport in favor of his own commentary. At no point does his character feel condescending, instead working towards a goal with a series of great visual gags the likes of which have populated SNL-lead movies for two decades by that point. As a whole, it's a rebellious underdog story that still has enough heart to realize that crass jokes aren't enough. While lowbrow, it's got enough smarts to set everything up where even Happy wrestling an alligator feels justified.

It could also help that Happy Gilmore is in a small class. There haven't been too many great golf comedies (The Legend of Bagger Vance, maybe?) and as a result it stands out more than his more conventionally themed movies to follow. He would return to the underdog sports genre (The Waterboy), but by then he was on to ridiculous accents and taking the random gags thing to surreal places. The brand of Sandler was still on point, though with less emphasis on cohesive plots. He was still funny because of his ability to be the butt of jokes, but the heart wasn't always there. At least, not as much as Happy Gilmore was. True, he could still bring the charm where he wanted (see The Wedding Singer), but it had fleeting returns. The more popular he became, the more that he seemed to settle on jokes over plot - and not usually in ways that reflected why he was initially revered as a comic savant.

After 20 years, Happy Gilmore is still possibly the best golf comedy of all time and a sign of what Sandler can be like when he tries. For whatever reason, the plot is among his most inventive and successful while also being one of his most endearing stories (especially for a film that ends with Chubbs waving at the protagonist alongside Abraham Lincoln and the aforementioned alligator). One could only wonder what would happen if he evolved as an artist, becoming more complex in his subversive humor. Maybe he wouldn't have been as financially successful, but his reverence would still be there (probably). Whatever you feel, Happy Gilmore was the film that showed Sandler being able to use his madcap antics in successful ways. Every last frame is unforgettable because of how much fun it has in subverting genre tropes. It also helps that there's not a whole lot out there like it.