YMMV / Happy Gilmore

• Accidental Aesop:
  • Work on the strengths you have. While Happy's skill in hockey is subpar, when he finds a career that allows him to use his slapshot, his life ultimately improves.
  • Many down-on-their-luck people can better themselves if you give them a chance. Happy's caddy is an inept hobo who can't catch a golf club bag. But overtime, thanks to Happy's faith, the man's skill as a caddy improves to the point that he has the strength and reflexes to deal with Happy's tantrums.
• Alternate Aesop Interpretation: The film's broader message is "hold in your temper", but the movie ends with Mr. Larson and Happy's fans beating the hell out of Shooter. The better message can be, "be discriminate in your use of physical force. There are times when you need to be angry, but you should normally let things slide".
• Aluminum Christmas Trees: Bob Barker was an avid martial arts practitioner well into his 80s, having been trained by Chuck Norris. He was actually to hold his own in a tussle with somebody.
• Better on DVD: The extended edition of the film has a scene where the cruel nursing home orderly gets his comeuppance — Happy throws him out of a second-story window after learning how he's been treating Grandma Gilmore. On the theatrical cut of the film, the orderly is a Karma Houdini who never has anything bad happen to him. His level of villainy is downplayed from the full cut, but it's generally seen as a better resolution to the subplot.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: Happy's "happy place" fantasy he envisions to calm himself down includes the expected: Virginia in lingerie waiting for him on a bed with two pitchers of beer, and his grandmother in nice clothes happily winning big on a slot machine. It also includes a dwarf in a cowboy costume riding on a tricycle and waving. No explanation is given for this; as far as can be deduced, it's just something Happy personally finds funny and relaxing for some reason.
• Catharsis Factor:
  • The Deleted Scene where Happy beats the crap out of the orderly that was abusing the elderly is incredibly fun to watch.
  • After Shooter's downright illegal behavior, watching him get the shit kicked out of him by Larson and Happy's fans is more than deserved.
• Crosses the Line Twice: Happy tries to fix his grandmother's air-conditioning unit, but too much Percussive Maintenance causes it to fall out of the window it's perched on and onto another resident. The woman ends up on her back somehow, flailing her limbs with the unit simply sitting on her like a large dog.
  "You know that 'Mista Mista' lady? I think I just, uh, killed her."
• Designated Villain: The IRS agent is treated as the bad guy for trying to repossess Grandma Gilmore's house. But no one calls out Grandma for not having paid her taxes in decades, with Happy trying to excuse it by saying, "she's old." Somewhat lampshaded when the agent says that he's just doing his job and the government is the one foreclosing on her house. (Not that it stops Happy from throwing him through the window.)
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Chubbs has surprisingly few scenes for being the main character's mentor, but they are powerful scenes. Being played by Carl Weathers can do that. He returns in Little Nicky in Heaven, one of the few characters to show up in more than one Adam Sandler movie.
  • Mr. Larson has even fewer scenes than Chubbs does, and one of them is a flashback where all he does is mug at the camera. But he's as memorable as he is intimidating. Being played by Richard Kiel helps here, too.
  • The "Jackass!" Guy who heckles Happy during the Pepsi Pro-Am tournament.
• Fan-Preferred Cut Content: Fans remain utterly baffled as to why the scene of Ben Stiller's abusive orderly receiving his comeuppance was deleted from the film.
• Fridge Brilliance: Even after attacking Bob Barker, Happy is only suspended because of the ratings his antics have drawn, but there's also potentially another reason: the alligator. It sneaking onto golf tour grounds with plenty of people around could've easily led to tragedy, not to mention bad publicity - deserved or otherwise, taking into account the same thing having happened to Chubbs - and so they would owe Happy for dealing with it.
• Genius Bonus: For golf fans, there may be some extra laughter over a range having a 400' sign (which none generally would have, since who could reach it?) and Shooter firing his caddie, because a five-iron suggestion for that approach would deserve a pink slip.
• Growing the Beard: For Adam Sandler. Although his first major lead movie, Billy Madison, was a modest hit, it was also a pretty thin movie that needed multiple BLAMs just to fill its scant runtime, not to mention Sandler talking in a juvenile lisp. With this movie, he proved he could play a mostly-normal likeable guy (with a Berserk Button) that also did a pretty good job hitting the Sports Stories beats and didn't just feel like an SNL sketch. Combining that persona with a traditional but successful formula plot would lay the groundwork for his more popular movies like The Wedding Singer and Big Daddy.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Happy Gilmore is a golfer with eye-popping skill who brings a new boom to golf by attracting younger fans and new sponsors who weren't into the sport before. The year after the movie came out, Tiger Woods hit the scene as a golfer with eye-popping skill who brought a new boom to golf by attracting younger fans and new sponsors who weren't in the sport before.
  • Happy Gilmore has an incredible drive that no other golfer can match, but has a lousy short game. In 2020, Bryson DeChambeau gained significant muscle mass and began outdriving his competition by wide margins, but also demonstrated a very weak short game that often negated his advantage off the tee.
  • Christopher McDonald gets a line where he interrupts himself with a panicked "OH MY GOD!" when Shooter McGavin sees Mr. Larson for the first time. A few years later, he gets an identical gag in The Iron Giant when Kent Mansley sees his car chomped in half.
    Shooter: Well, moron, good for Happy [sees Mr. Larson] Gilm-OHMYGOD!
    Mansley: Biggest thing in this town is probably the homecoming [sees the missing half of his car] que-OHMYGOD!
  • "You eat pieces of shit for breakfast?" Well, he was a guest star on Star Trek: The Next Generation, and Star Trek: Discovery would later reveal that food replicators use feces as an organic base, so yes, he really does eat pieces of shit for breakfast.
• Iron Woobie: Between his father dying, getting beaten nearly to death for an on-the-job accident, failing to make the hockey team, losing his girlfriend, and watching helplessly as Grandma gets evicted from her home, Happy has to endure a lot. It's enough to turn him into a de facto Determinator hero, despite his Jerkass tendencies.
• Love to Hate:
  • Shooter McGavin's over-the-top smarminess has seen him become a pretty beloved comedy movie villain, particularly the smarminess gets him in trouble.
  • The abusive orderly played by Ben Stiller left one hell of an impression to say the least.
• Memetic Mutation: Has spawned so many, it's near impossible for millenials to walk onto a range without quoting at least one of the following:
  • It's all in the hips, it's all in the hips...
  • YER GONNA DIE CLOWN!
  • You eat pieces of shit for breakfast?
  • "Guns don't kill people, I kill people!" It has become so popular so you can expect someone, either fictional or real person, to say this when they want to sound tough.
  • "Grizzly Adams did have a beard."
  • "The price is wrong, bitch!"
  • The hole scene.
    "SUCK MY WHITE ASS, BALL!!"
  • Shooter McGavin is his own meme. "Well moron, good for Happy Gilm-OH MY GOD!!"
  • "How about I just go eat some hay, I can make things out of clay and lay by the bay, I just may, what do you say?"
  • "And YOU can count on ME waiting for you in the parking lot!"
  • Replicating Happy's unorthodox slapshot golf swing is a popular Self-Imposed Challenge among golfers.
• Moral Event Horizon: Shooter crosses it when he buys Happy's grandmother's house in order to blackmail Happy into quitting the tour, and makes the comment that if Happy lays a hand on him, "[he'll] burn the house down and piss on the ashes." With this act, Shooter takes their rivalry off the course and makes it personal, and nothing less than karmic retribution direct from Happy himself will do as punishment. And if that didn't send him over the line having his deranged fan hit Happy with a car, which could've killed him, certainly sealed him as a horrible asshole.
• Narm:
  • Happy's first girlfriend scolding and then breaking up with him over his speakerphone is funny, just because it's so poorly acted.
  • Virginia's panicked scream of "Happy, look out—AUGGH!" when Donald ("Jackass!") is about to drive his car into Happy never sounds right.
• Never Live It Down: Christopher McDonald is most known for his role in this movie and nothing else, despite playing multiple roles through film and television. Among this list are various characters in the Superman franchise, including the Man of Steel himself in Batman Beyond... And yet, McDonald is only remembered as Shooter McGavin. That being said, McDonald is a lifelong fan of golf, and says that he's never had to pay for another game of golf in his life after taking the role of Shooter, so one presumes that he's not too upset about the whole thing.
• Older Than They Think: UHF also has a scene where a character says "Guns don't kill people. I do."
• One-Scene Wonder:
  • Bob Barker, as he utterly whoops Happy during their game. Barker initially was going to decline the cameo, until he was informed he would win.
  • Kevin Nealon as Gary Potter, a flaky New Age golfer who gives Happy tips early on when they golf together.
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • Huh, who knew that Claire Dunphy used to date Happy Gilmore?
  • Peter Kelamis, who would later go on to find fame as a voice actor (most notably as one of the English voice actors for Goku from Dragon Ball Z and Rolf from Ed, Edd n Eddy) is Gary Potter's caddy.
  • Same goes for David Kaye as well, where he had a cameo as a newsman questioning Shooter.
• Signature Scene: Happy and Bob Barker's brawl.
• Special Effect Failure: Likely intentionally, the shape of Carl Weathers' real arm can clearly be seen tucked into his sleeve, holding Chubbs' prosthetic arm.
• Squick:
  • "I saw two big, fat, naked bikers in the woods, off the 17th, having sex! How am I supposed to chip with that going on?!"
  • Happy's corrupted happy place is unnerving.
• Suspiciously Similar Song: When appropriate, the score switches to something like "Money (That's What I Want)" by Barrett Strong, enough to warrant a credit during the ending crawl.
• Tear Jerker:
  • Happy facing the aftermath of his fight with Bob Barker. The board suspends him for one month, putting a damper on his plans to save his grandmother's house. After he points out the likelihood of her house getting repossessed, Mr. Thompson blows him off with "Whoop-de-doo, Get Out!"
  • Chubbs' death. Then at his funeral, Happy picks up his prosthetic hand and shakes it as if he's still alive.
  • The zamboni operator quietly singing along to "Endless Love" and then sadly bowing his head. It's a surprisingly deep characterization for just a few seconds of screentime, as if there's an incredibly tragic story attached to the song for the poor guy that we in the audience never learn anything about.
• Too Cool to Live: Chubbs is wise, funny, affable, and the only guy in the film who can scold Happy without setting off Happy's temper. So of course he isn't going to make it to the climax.
• Values Dissonance: As humorous as it can seem, Happy's breakup with his girlfriend has him behaving in a very abusive and creepy manner: screaming obscenities at her, apologizing as a means of manipulating her back to his life and then lying to people about her dying.
  • And then a large, older Asian woman overhears his creepy attempt at serenating his ex-girlfriend over the speaker (long after she's left the area) and comes up to his apartment with heart in hand. The fact that her age and weight are treated as repulsive by the movie would definitely not fly today. Although Happy seemed to ultimately be into her anyway.
• Vindicated by History: The film was one of those intentionally stupid 90's comedies, but it did get some decent reviews and was a Breakthrough Hit for Sandler's career. Later years, even as Sandler's career has had a massive swing in quality in either direction, this film is generally regarded as a pretty great comedy in its' own right. Both the Bob Barker fight and Shooter McGavin as a villain are fondly remembered.
• Watch It for the Meme: As mentioned above, the "Happy Gilmore vs. Bob Barker" scene is the most well-known part of the movie.

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