Happy Gilmore 1996

Susan Stark, Detroit News: Read more

Stephen Holden, New York Times: Happy's tantrums, which the movie pretends are liberating explosions of self-expression, aren't nearly maniacal enough to reach comic delirium. Read more

Kevin Thomas, Los Angeles Times: You don't feel that Sandler and director Dennis Dugan are trying for the kind of subversiveness that might just make Happy's brutal anarchy more effective. Read more

Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly: [A] one-joke Caddyshack for the blitzed and jaded. Read more

Dave Kehr, New York Daily News: The comedy is never more than sudden, outsized explosions of violence from the otherwise placid, childlike Happy. But director Dugan maximizes the laughs through careful timing and counterpoint. Read more

James Berardinelli, ReelViews: Sandler's movie is worth a few laughs, but not many of the comic sequences are original, and even fewer are inspired. Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: The Happy Gilmore character is strange. I guess we are supposed to like him. Read more

Edward Guthmann, San Francisco Chronicle: It may smell awful from a distance, especially if you have low tolerance for lowbrow humor, but up close this yarn about an unlikely golf star is fairly painless. Read more

Time Out: Superior disposable comedy. Read more

Brian Lowry, Variety: There are about three minutes of funny material in Happy Gilmore, and pretty much all of them are in the trailer. Read more

Richard Harrington, Washington Post: Happy Gilmore may not be an ace in the hole, but it beats par by a long shot. Read more