The ending of Happy Gilmore 2 was about the titular character saving traditional golf and also sending his daughter, Vienna, to the Paris Opera Ballet School by winning the Maxi Golf competition. After winning his first Tour Championship, Happy bought back his grandma’s house. He married Virginia; he had five kids with her. Life was going alright. But in 2014, a mishit on Happy’s part killed Virginia, causing him to spiral out. He went broke. He lost his house. His boys—Wayne, Gordie, Bobby, and Terry—moved into an apartment and paid their rent by working blue-collar jobs. Meanwhile, he and his daughter, Vienna, moved into a not-so-savory neighborhood, along with John Daly, who lived in their garage. While Happy’s golfing career was as good as over, Vienna was starting to show promise as a ballerina. The Paris Opera Ballet School had seen her performance and was willing to accept her candidature. However, since the fee was $75,000 a year, Happy had to go back to golfing to help Vienna have the future that she wanted. The only issue was that Frank, the mind behind Maxi Golf Course, was hellbent on bringing an end to traditional golfing. Frank’s version of golfing was so heinous that even Shooter, Happy’s nemesis, refused to work with him, and joined hands with Happy and his team of pro golfers to keep the old ways alive. Well, do Happy and his crew succeed? Did he get to send Vienna to Paris? Did the mid-credits set up a sequel? Let’s find out.
Spoiler Alert
Happy Saved Traditional Golfing
Happy was part of a team that had real-life golfers Bryson DeChambeau, Brooks Koepka, Rory McIlroy, and Scottie Scheffler on it. They had Shooter, Oscar (one of the best caddies out there), and Slim (the son of Happy’s late mentor, Chubbs) to assist. But the Maxi Golf Course was no walk in the park. For starters, the players on Frank’s team—Harley, Flex, Screech, 8 Ball, and Billy—had been surgically enhanced. Yes, you read that right. Frank had purposefully severed their iliolumbar ligament to increase his golfers’ range of motion in the hips. The more they could rotate their hips, the more power they got in the swing. Sure, Frank was inspired by Happy’s ability to hit the ball incredibly far, but it was his study of a golfer called Daggett that actually gave him the idea to do that surgery. He knew that Happy was one-of-a-kind, and no matter how much he trained his players, they’d never become like him. So, he not only found a workaround, but he also devised a golf tournament that’d make regular golfers obsolete. The Maxi Golf Course had super huge fairways, dune buggies instead of golf buggies so that golfers could race from one spot to another, monkey ring bars to test the golfers’ endurance, super high-speed windmills to alter the course of the ball, pinball bumpers, fire pits, artificial snowstorms, and a putting green that was unstable and could be remotely rotated.
Now, of course, Frank designed it this way to increase the entertainment value of golf, but it was apparent that he had made the whole thing so difficult that the course could only be completed by his surgically modified golfers. I guess his long-term goal was that more people would watch this cutthroat version of golf, more people would want to get their ligaments surgically severed to become better golfers, and he’d make money in the field of sports as well as medicine. The fatal flaw in Frank’s plan was that he overestimated his own golfers, and he underestimated Happy’s unorthodox-yet-traditional methods. So, on the one hand, his own team fell short, while Happy overcame every obstacle that was put in his path. Before Happy’s final putt, Frank gave him a condition: if Happy lost, he’d join the Maxi League; if Happy won, Frank would shut down the Maxi League, give Happy his Rolls Royce, and sponsor Vienna’s dancing school fees, Happy’s grandma’s house, and Oscar’s restaurant. So, when Happy putted the ball at the end of Happy Gilmore 2, he wasn’t the only one who won. Everyone that he loved got what they wanted, and traditional golf was saved. Yes, this was no Top Gun: Maverick, where the theme of “out with the old, in with the new” was explored in depth. Yet it managed to get the message across that you cannot force reinvention on everything; sometimes old is gold, and you just have to accept it as it is.
Vienna Went To Paris
Happy Gilmore was about the titular character saving his grandmother’s home and proving that he was worth a damn. But, I guess since it was the ‘90s, drinking beer and acting angry were seen as positives because they fueled Happy’s golfing methods. While the Gilmore household’s anger issues still continue to be an unavoidable aspect of their lives, with Happy even channeling his anger towards Hal (his grandmother’s former caretaker and his current AA therapist) to drive the ball, Happy Gilmore 2 served as a heavy criticism of alcoholism and framed it as a major reason behind the suffering that Happy’s whole family was experiencing. Sure, the boys and Vienna would’ve made ends meet eventually. However, that wouldn’t have undone the damage Happy had done by drinking away all his money and ruining the reputation he had built up over the last three decades. He knew that his family would love him no matter what he did, but he wanted to be someone his loved ones could look up to. Hence, winning the Maxi Golf Course wasn’t just about saving golf and sending Vienna to ballet school; it was also about Happy saving himself from an early grave. So, while putting Vienna on a plane to Paris (yes, I understand the joke) served as the ending of the film, I think Happy being sober for three whole months was the real ending, because it sent an important message to the fans of this franchise: alcoholism shouldn’t be glorified. It is a disease, and the sooner it is dealt with, the better it is for all parties concerned.
I also liked the fact that Hal got his comeuppance for his abusive “therapy” methods. Charlotte, one of the clients, was actually working for the FBI, and he was arrested for fraud and extortion. Well, I think his clients pummeled him for stealing Happy’s sobriety coin first, which echoes the ending of the first film where Shooter got punished by Happy’s fans, and after that he was sent to jail. Additionally, the scenes between Adam and his real-life daughters, Sadie (Charlotte) and Sunny (Vienna), were quite sweet. Sandler’s Happy Madison Productions kind of functions like a family business. That’s why it’s pretty normal for him to cast his family and friends in his films. But this case of nepotism, in my opinion, deepens the themes of an otherwise lighthearted movie. When you see Happy thanking Charlotte and Vienna for helping him get through tough times, you can also see Adam expressing the sense of gratitude he feels towards Sadie and Sunny for being beside him regardless of the ups and downs that his career has been through. Yes, yes, I know it’s manipulative, cheesy, and extremely corny, but the meta-ness of these characters worked for me. What can I say? I am easily moved. With all that said, I don’t think the movie needed to put so many dead people in the sky waving down at Happy; just Virginia would’ve been enough, because her death led to Happy’s downward spiral, and when he finally redeemed himself, he should’ve just seen her.
Where’s Frank?
Believe it or not, Happy Gilmore 2 had a mid-credits scene that addressed the controversy around Frank and Maxi. So, it was revealed that Maxi Sports Drink, the company that was sponsoring the golf course, had to recall its products because they were causing irreversible halitosis, gingivitis, and a new disease called “tongue rot.” Now, since it’s my job to look too deeply at things, I think this was a dig at three prominent and controversial personalities from YouTube who were responsible for the creation of Prime and Lunchly. I mean, the movie was full of cameos from YouTubers, TV personalities, pop stars, rappers, golfers, and almost every celebrity that Adam Sandler is familiar with. But despite the popularity of those three YouTubers, who shall remain unnamed, they never showed up in this movie for even a millisecond. When you couple that with the similarity between the designs of Maxi and Prime and the fact that Lunchly was accused of having mold in their food, it becomes pretty evident that this segment of the mid-credits was meant to critique those three YouTubers. In addition to that, it was revealed that Frank was nowhere to be found. This means two things. Firstly, unless Frank has paid all the money that’s required to complete Vienna’s schooling, Oscar’s restaurant, and the purchase of Happy’s grandma’s house, his disappearance is going to cause a lot of issues for all of them. Secondly, Frank’s disappearance indicates that his rivalry with Happy isn’t over yet.
If Happy Gilmore 3 gets greenlit, we will probably see Frank coming up with new ways to terrorize Happy. When he got Shooter released from the Westford State Mental Hospital, it was hinted that Frank had contacts in high places. Sure, his debacle at the Maxi Golf Course dented his reputation, and many of his investors must have abandoned him. But maybe there are some loyalists still willing to back him in these trying times. Frank’s revenge will definitely be golf-themed, but I’m actually interested to see how he’ll draw Happy into his web of lies and deceit a second time. By the way, I like the fact that Frank’s arc, and whatever he’s going to do in the future, serves as a commentary on how all these YouTuber-turned-business-tycoons avoid getting “cancelled.” Every time they find themselves in the middle of a controversy, they either put out an apology video or just lay low. Public memory is famously spotty, and that allows these ghouls to return to the limelight eventually instead of rotting away in jail. I mean, Scottie was jailed for punching a dude, but Frank can’t be captured for running a scam? That says everything that needs to be said about the society we live in. Anyway, those are just my thoughts on the ending of Happy Gilmore 2. If you have any opinions on the same, feel free to share them in the comments section below.
