Last year, "Saturday Night Live" veteran Adam Sandler had a major flop with his first starring picture, the abominable "Billy Madison." So I confess that I went to "Happy Gilmore" with more than a little trepidation.
Yet, to my own surprise, I laughed a lot.
Now, I don't want to oversell this — "Happy" isn't a big step up from "Billy." It's an uneven film loaded with gags that fall flat and there is a horrifyingly unfunny subplot that has unbilled Ben Stiller playing a sadistic health-care worker at a retirement home (which should have been edited out).
But the spirit of the film and the character played by Sandler are every bit as joyfully anarchic as the Marx Brothers, the Three Stooges or Cheech & Chong. Happy is the ultimate chip-on-his-shoulder clown, who settles every argument with a punch in the nose or a biting wisecrack. He has a fuse so short the slightest spark can set him off, occasionally with hysterical results.
Happy is a lifelong hockey nut, and he wants desperately to play with the pros. But he has one little problem. He can't skate.
Still, he keeps trying out . . . and he keeps getting turned away.
But when his grandmother is about to lose her home to the IRS, Happy inadvertently discovers he has a natural knack for the one game he despises most — golf. And he has an unbelievable 400-yard tee shot!
Unfortunately, he can't putt . . . but that will come later.
So Happy manages to worm his way into the PGA tour, hoping to earn big bucks fast to save his grandmother's home. There, he goes head to head with cocky, obnoxious tour champ Shooter McGavin (Christopher McDonald) and single-handedly turns the staid, calm, sophisticated game of golf into a three-ring circus.
"Happy Gilmore" is at its best when Happy is on the green, and the comic highlight is, as you have no doubt seen from TV ads, the fist-fight with celebrity golfer Bob Barker. "The price is wrong, Bob," Happy says — after which, Barker beats the living daylights out of him. It's a hilarious sequence.
And another, if darker bit that brings some huge laughs is a running gag a former golf star, Chubbs Peterson (Carl Weathers), who helps Happy with his game and whose wooden hand becomes the centerpiece for some very funny sight gags.
Still, if some of the skits within the movie work very well, the movie itself leaves much to be desired. Sandler is an undisciplined actor and could use a strong director, but Dennis Dugan ("Problem Child") isn't the guy. (Dugan also has a prominent acting role here.)
And if ever there was a product-placement playground, this is it. If you don't remember Subway and AT&T as you leave the theater, you slept through the film.
"Happy Gilmore" is rated PG-13 for violence, considerable vulgarity, some profanity (most of it bleeped), partial nudity (mooning) and sexual imagery.