People Are Horrified By the Premise of ‘Happy Gilmore 2’
“Alright, it’s time to watch Happy Gilmore 2. Hey, there’s Happy, it’s great to see him again. Look he’s doing his classic Happy Gilmore swin– Wait, what’s happening? Oh dear God, no!”
This is how we imagine most people processed the opening minutes of Adam Sandler’s much-anticipated sequel. It's not a spoiler exactly, since it happens at the three-minute mark, but Netflix’s marketing has been pretty cagey about the fact that the whole movie is predicated on a tragedy.
In the film’s opening montage, (spoilers for the very beginning of the movie?), we learn that Happy has married Virginia, Julie Bowen’s character from the original. They have a bunch of kids and seem to be living happily ever after — until Happy inadvertently kills her during a game with his ultra-powerful drive, that is.
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“In golf, even when you’re at the top of your game, you can always shank one,” Happy says in his narration. “I was now a single father of five children, there was really only one thing I could do. I’d never been a big boozer, but alcohol was the only thing that helped me to forget what I’d done to the sweetest woman I’d ever known.”
Yup, Happy gives up golf and becomes a severe alcoholic after inadvertently killing his wife, which also means that he can no longer afford to live in the house he spent the entirety of the first movie working to win back. And it’s all set to the sounds of that warm guitar riff from Lynyrd Skynyrd's “Tuesday’s Gone,” but that doesn’t make it any less horrifying.
Even though the movie just dropped on Netflix today, social media is already full of posts from shocked viewers who weren’t expecting the follow-up to one of the goofiest sports comedies of the ‘90s to open with a bleak twist that completely undoes the original’s happy ending.
This is especially shocking because Bowen talked at length in interviews about how she was pleased to be returning to the role, and relieved that she wasn't replaced by a younger actress, which seems a little weird considering that her role was reduced to this sad-as-hell opening and some ghostly appearances.
While some fans had already guessed that Virginia was dead based on the footage we see of her in the trailers, the way she died was far more heartbreaking than anybody could have anticipated. This would be like if The Karate Kid Part II revealed that Daniel LaRusso had accidentally crane kicked Mr. Miyagi to death between movies.
The Victoria incident wasn’t even the first time that Happy accidentally killed someone close to him; his surprise gift for Chubbs in the original movie caused his mentor to fallout of an open window in terror.
Virginia’s death occurs purely to tee up (pun intended) Happy’s triumphant return to golf. But maybe instead of golfing, Happy should just go to therapy instead? Somewhere other than the alcoholic support group run by the creep who abused his grandmother?
It sure is a lot of trauma for a movie for a movie with Subway collector’s cups.
