Happy Gilmore turns 25

I can't believe that I am sitting here typing this right now because when this iconic film was released I wasn't even 25 years old, now it is one of the movies that I have the fondest memories of and perhaps a great deal of my pals at the time do as well. This film was so all-encompassing that literally everyone, whether they were an Adam Sandler fan or not, knew at least some of the lines and catch-phrases from it.

Well anyway, it turned 25 years old on Feb 16th, if you can believe that.

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Sandler was relatively new in his career as a silly film-maker at the time and the paltry budget this film had of $12 million is, dare I say, evident as the film goes on. There was no shortage of star-power in the movie, but many of these people were in bit roles, weren't really actors, or their careers hadn't yet blossomed.

I only recently found out that "Claire" from Modern Family was Happy's love interest in Happy Gilmore.

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I think that Julie Bowen actually looks BETTER now 25 years later than she did back then, but who would have thought that her career would have taken off by being cast in Modern Family the way that it did. Since she was a relative nobody back in 1996, it certainly wasn't her.

In Happy Gilmore, we are introduced to the silliness that was all Sandler was really known for back then and to be fair, he has continued down that path for many many blockbuster films since then. I am one of those people that thinks that Adam is actually a very good serious actor and the rest of the critic world seems to think so as well, it is just a shame that his serious films get very little notice and almost always fail to make money whereas stupid films like Grown Ups make hundreds of millions of dollars.

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But if we go back to 1996, if you were alive and have cinema memories at that point in your life, I don't think that anyone really thought that Sandler's career would continue the way that it has to this day. He was a "one trick pony" and although Billy Madison and Happy Gilmore were both commercial successes, they certainly weren't terribly mainstream.

Happy Gilmore wasn't event terribly well put together. I can recall just off the top of my head several instances where they definitely cut corners in post-production because going back to refilm the various scenes would have been to costly and instead they just (clearly and obviously) overdubbed the scenes with what was later deemed the "correct lines."

Also, there was the inclusion of "Mr. Larson", who is famous for being "Jaws" in a Bond film but was clearly disabled in the scenes that he is included in during this film.

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The man is named Richard Kiel and while I don't know exactly what was wrong with him, every single scene he is in he is being propped up by someone else or leaning on them because he is not capable of standing on his own. I appreciate the homage for sure, and later this ended up being one of the most endearing parts of the film, but it was pretty evident that this giant could not stand on his own.

Recently, "Shooter McGavin" (Christopher McDonald) and Happy Gilmore did a little bit of a golf montage to commemorate the 25th anniversary of this iconic film which may have simultaneously launched Sandler's career and perhaps ended McDonald's.

While Happy Gilmore didn't make the hundreds of millions that his romantic comedies make these days, it did make enough to make Hollywood notice that he was a real box-office draw and at least in my mind, without this silly film, we might not have had a lot of the later work of Sandler, nor would have he been able to drag all of his lessor-known pals along with him in minor roles in basically anything that he makes.

Happy Gilmore is one of those movies that I can quote today, and if the person I am talking to gets the reference, I know that we are going to be friends. It was that big of a deal back in the mid 90's and honestly, it deserves its place in history.

Happy Gilmore is currently available on Netflix is mine and most regions around the world. If by some chance you haven't seen this gem of comedy history, go do it now.