Should you by no means noticed the primary Comfortable Gilmore, 30 years in the past, will you be misplaced now? No. Comfortable Gilmore 2, now streaming on Netflix, neither requires nor asks to your full consideration. Adam Sandler is Comfortable Gilmore, returning to one of many broadly humorous buffoonery roles that helped break him out of the SNL pack again then. Comfortable was a Bruins hockey freak whose energy with a driver and bouts of Sandler Shouting powered him onto the skilled golf scene. However many years later, due to varied circumstances, he’s doing extra ingesting than driving. Can he up his sport in time to fund his 16-year-old daughter’s ballet faculty desires? Maybe the roughly 9 trillion cameos in Comfortable Gilmore 2, from the worlds of superstar, sports activities and music, will assist him discover the inexperienced once more.
The Gist: Hey, it’s Julie Bowen, again within the Comfortable Gilmore universe as Virginia, Comfortable’s real love. Their child, Gordie, is grown now, and in reality he’s grown into AEW Harm Syndicate wrestler Maxwell Jacob Friedman. They’ve three different sons, too, who take after their father by entering into fights and performing dick jokes each time attainable. And so they have a daughter, Vienna (performed by Sandler’s real-life daughter Sunny), whose alternative to research ballet in Paris is the five-iron to the butt Comfortable wants to get his life and golf sport again in gear.
Alcoholism isn’t actually a humorous topic, and particularly not whenever you maintain beating the “joke” of Comfortable’s temptation. However when he’s not sipping whiskey from cutaway reservoirs in cucumbers and Callaways, Comfortable, with his unbloused Timberlands, saggy hockey sweaters, and Adidas trainers, is trying his return to skilled golf. There’s a villain on the scene impeding that. Not Shooter McGavin, although Christopher McDonald can also be alongside for this journey. In Comfortable Gilmore 2, Benny Safdie is Frank Manatee, the wealthy proprietor of an power drink firm and the creator of a LIV Golf stand-in known as Maxi. Frank’s golfers both seem like American Gladiators or Billy Jenkins, a washed journeyman performed by Haley Joel Osment, and Maxi presents an upstart problem to the skilled golf institution. This time round, Comfortable Gilmore, with his mile-high drives and raging fashion, isn’t the disruptor. Alongside just a few inexperienced jackets’ value of veteran PGA cameos, he’ll lead the cost on the hyperlinks towards Frank’s workforce and Maxi’s low-rent online game antics.
Gee, surprise if he’ll see it via to victory. There are just a few mildly humorous coaching sequences right here, set to apparent tunes from Foreigner and The Cult. There are just a few good moments between Sandler and Sunny Sandler as Vivi. However largely in Comfortable Gilmore 2, there are cameos. One after the opposite they floor. Outdated golf guys. New golf guys. Unhealthy Bunny and Travis Kelce. Eminem. Stephen A. Smith. Kelsey Plum. Boban Marjanović. Cam’ron. John Daly. Margaret Qualley. Generally these cameos are related to previous bits – You knew “You are able to do it” was gonna be in right here – and generally they simply float in house. Probably not vital and not likely humorous, simply kind of there. Type of like this thirty-years-later sequel itself.
What Films Will It Remind You Of? So is Sandler gonna make a Billy Madison sequel subsequent? The unique got here out a 12 months earlier than Comfortable Gilmore, and his manufacturing firm’s title is a portmanteau of those ’90s hit titles. (And for that matter, “Stop looking at me, Swaaan!” might be our all-time favourite Sandler film reference.) You possibly can additionally stream any variety of the opposite Adam Sandler-featuring Netflix motion pictures he’s made lately – they’re all on the market within the menus, a clickable field away, even those you by no means knew he made – however we’ll additionally level out Hustle from 2022. It’s nonetheless about sports activities, and like Comfortable Gilmore 2 is totally jacked with cameos. However Hustle’s additionally a pleasant instance of Sandler working with his occasionally-seen extra dramatic aspect.
Efficiency Value Watching: Benny Safdie might be the chief within the Comfortable Gilmore 2 clubhouse. As Frank Manatee, none of his strains leap out as straight gold. (No line wherever on this film does.) However Safdie manages to make Frank without delay a bro’d out headband fanatic, a man who in all probability idolizes the moneybags psychos in Mountainhead, and a villain straight out of the White Goodman faculty. Manatee even comes full with his personal golf model of Globo Health club.
Memorable Dialogue: Lavell Crawford as Slim, who performs the one-armed son of the late nice Carl Weathers’ Chubb Peterson: “You really liked your spouse, and you liked my dad. And so they liked you, interval. You realize what else they liked? Golf. I talked to your little lady, and he or she mentioned you bought an opportunity to save the entire sport by taking part in towards some clown league? Yeah? Properly why don’t you go kick some Bozo ass, then?”
Intercourse and Pores and skin: Nah, however there are many visitors cones and brooms being held close to crotches.
Our Take: Possibly it’s the weekend, and also you’ve obtained a while to kill, and also you’re gonna scroll a film when you watch your telephone. Properly, Comfortable Gilmore 2 has been specifically formulated with a random celeb or athlete or musician cameo each 6 or 11 minutes or so. That is the Comfortable Gilmore 2 Assure™: You, in your couchrotting state, will obtain a gentle jolt of “Oh, it’s Jon Lovitz,” or “Hey, Margaret Qualley on a placing inexperienced” everytime you occur to lookup. And when you had been watching your telephone, you weren’t lacking a lot of something pertinent about what Comfortable Gilmore 2 was scrolling. It simply rolls via Comfortable’s dead-end life, via dead-end jokes about his sneaking drinks, and thru dead-end references to and drop-ins from quite a few Sandler joints previous, till the entire thing dead-ends in a sophomoric golf shootout showdown.
Type of extremely, Adam Sandler does handle just a few flashes where we begin to care about Comfortable’s journey. However these add up to nothing, or are usually derailed by extra lame cameos. (John Daly ingesting hand sanitizer? What a laffer! Let’s do it twice!) What about Ben Stiller surfacing as a model of the manic elder-abusing orderly from the unique film? Does that get the ball within the gap for you?
Our Name: Extra like Comfortable Gil-less. This aimless, only-occasionally-sorta-kinda-funny sequel to one in all Adam Sandler’s career-making motion pictures doesn’t do a lot of something with the character, or actually something in any respect. It’s a cameo clog as an alternative, and as a sports activities comedy misses the inexperienced totally. Comfortable Gilmore 2 is a SKIP IT.
Johnny Loftus (@johnnyloftus.bsky.social) is a Chicago-based author. A veteran of the choice weekly trenches, his work has additionally appeared in Leisure Weekly, Pitchfork, The All Music Information, and The Village Voice.
