Happy Gilmore came out in 1996.

I saw it a few times in those years but I definitely hadn’t seen it in a couple of decades.

Happy Gilmore 2 came out on July 25th.

I took advantage of that occasion to watch the first Happy Gilmore again for the first time in many years, and then I watched the second.

(Of note: it’s still kind of a new thing that I have my new chair to sit in when we watch a movie as a family. I love it.)

Happy Gilmore still made me laugh all these years later.

Happy Gilmore 2 was a pretty good sequel - some very funny moments, some subtlely funny moments, some good little updated/more politically correct jokes aimed at the first movie, and a ton of cameos.

In a lot of ways, Happy Gilmore 2 was almost like a “Best of…” Adam Sandler movies.

The only thing missing was any kind of a Norm MacDonald reference - I feel like everyone else connected in any way to Adam Sandler had their moment.

So there were those cameos - like Tim Herlihy (kind of a cameo) and his son (a little more than a cameo) - and then the star cameos, like Travis Kelce (who I immediately recognized) and Eminem (who I had no idea was in the movie until I saw it in the credits).

The movie was clever in how it paralleled the first movie while telling a different enough story to make it its own movie. It wasn’t the greatest movie on Earth but it’s not supposed to be - it’s a good Adam Sandler movie.

I love hearing stories about how nice of a guy Adam Sandler is. I always liked him, obviously I always thought he was hilarious (maybe not obviously. But I think if you know me it might be obvious.), but from all accounts he seems like a genuinely good person.

And, man, he must be smart. Or he must have surrounded himself with a lot of smart people. Or a little bit of both.

He’s just been working and doing this kind of thing for 30 years - the fact that I can call Happy Gilmore 2 a good Adam Sandler movie and have you know exactly what I mean is an indication that he has created a brand for himself that is identifiable and will draw people out to see his work. And I think that’s great.

I haven’t seen a lot of what Adam Sandler has done in the years between Happy Gilmore and Happy Gilmore 2, to be honest.

But after watching this movie and feeling the good feelings I felt just watching an Adam Sandler movie…maybe I should do some catching up.