Warning: Contains spoilers.
Happy Gilmore 2 is, among other things, a chosen-family reunion. Virtually every living star from the original makes it into the sequel. Even those who’ve died still make their presence felt, either because we meet their descendants (as with characters played by Joe Flaherty and Richard Kiel), or because they’ve been buried in the same cemetery (Bob Barker, Frances Bay), or both (Carl Weathers). It’s nice that everyone got to hang out again, but dozens of characters, old and new, have to compete so hard for screen time that I didn’t get nearly enough Christopher McDonald.
If you pay even a little attention to screen performers, you probably have an unofficial list of the character actors you’re consistently delighted to see pop up in a show or film. By the time McDonald showed up in Happy Gilmore, he was a firm favorite for me from his roles in Grease 2, Breakin’ (the original, NOT Electric Boogaloo) and the top-tier Cheers episode “Endless Slumper.” I can’t have been the only one who thought his performance in Thelma & Louise as Darryl, Thelma’s shitbag husband, should have been among those nominated for Oscars that year.
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Not long after, he brought his symmetrical face and polished vocal delivery to another multiple Oscar nominee: Quiz Show, in which he played the host of the embattled game show 21. Did the great action comedy Midnight Run need one TV movie sequel, never mind a trilogy? No, but recasting a Robert De Niro character with McDonald is such an unexpected choice that you can’t really help wondering how it went, right?
Happy Gilmore’s Shooter McGavin — an entitled, smarmy prick — is the Christopher McDonald-iest role in his very Christopher McDonald-y career. A PGA Tour mainstay when the titular Happy (Adam Sandler) arrives, Shooter isn’t prepared for Happy to shake up the golf world; the anarchy of Happy’s fans makes Shooter’s earth-toned golf togs and signature finger-gun move look even cornier by contrast. Shooter becomes morbidly fixated on taking Happy down, hiring a loudmouth (the late Joe Flaherty) to heckle Happy. When that doesn’t work, Shooter’s plant drives onto the course and straight into Happy, who escapes serious injury, goes on to win the tournament and evades Shooter’s attempts to rip the ceremonial gold jacket off him.
In the sequel, we find out that this moment induces a major mental break in Shooter, leading to court-ordered in-patient psychiatric treatment until, well, now.
Shooter — still fixated on Happy — is eventually released from the institution thanks to the intervention of a wealthy patron. Frank Manatee (Benny Safdie) is a sports-drink entrepreneur preparing to launch the Maxi Golf League; Happy having already spurned his overtures to be face of the new league, Frank tries to recruit Shooter instead. Once Shooter figures out Frank is even less mentally well than Shooter himself is — Frank’s secret plan for golf supremacy involves hip surgery — he flees Frank’s facility, finds Happy, and one graveyard fistfight later, Shooter and Happy quash their beef and basically proceed as allies from there. (Though it’s a shame Weathers died before he could appear in the sequel, at least there’s a nod to him in the enemies-to-friends arc echoing Weathers’s role as Apollo Creed in Rocky II.)
Shooter and Happy’s new friendship leads to some amusing moments, like when he has to borrow clothes from Happy and comes down in the full Happy drag of flannel/metal concert shirt/sweats/work boots. Or when Happy psychs him up by using trash talk against Shooter’s MGL opponents that Shooter formerly used against Happy. But other than shots of him celebrating Happy’s victory, that’s all the Shooter we get. He’s technically an escaped mental patient: Does he have to go back? Can he return to the Tour? Now that all of Happy’s children have moved to Paris, will Shooter and Happy hang out? Should I maybe just slake my thirst for Christopher McDonald with his Emmy-nominated role as Marty on Hacks instead?
And are his eyes getting… bluer?
McDonald works, don’t get me wrong, but a man who still looks this good (and still has this much hair) should be even more ubiquitous, if you ask me — and I would have traded every scene with all the real (dull) golfers for more Shooter.
Pow pow (blow).