February 16, 1996

Happy Gilmore

By STEPHEN HOLDEN

dam Sandler's new comedy, ``Happy Gilmore,'' takes a gleefully puerile view of what constitutes a working-class hero. The movie's title character is a failed hockey player who accidentally discovers he is a whiz at golf and becomes the bad-boy sensation of the professional circuit.

To describe Happy's antics as boorish is putting it mildly.

Injecting the violence of hockey into the genteel world of golf, Happy exhibits all the grace of a zonked-out metal rocker trashing a fancy tea party. Whenever Happy flubs a shot, he flies into a rage, stamps on the ground, tosses his club in the air and spews out a torrent of profanity.

Happy crudely taunts his rivals.

When teamed with the game-show host Bob Barker at a celebrity tournament, he punches out his partner, and the two end up fighting like dogs.

This sort of bad behavior makes the television ratings for golf soar. It also attracts a motley group of fans - bikers, geeks and alienated types - who follow Happy from tournament to tournament and make everybody uncomfortable.

But if ``Happy Gilmore'' contains the germ of what might have been a pungent comic satire of class warfare and sports, it is far too eager to be the ``Dumb and Dumber'' of the links to take its ice-hockey-versus-golf metaphor to the next step.

The movie presents Happy with an archrival, Shooter McGavin (Christopher McDonald), who is so snidely supercilious that there is no contest when it comes to likability. Happy also has a goofy grandmother (Frances Bay) who enjoys greeting him at the door wearing a pointy-tongued Kiss mask.

As for humor, the movie, which was directed by Dennis Dugan from a screenplay by Sandler and his writing partner, Tim Herlihy, simply doesn't deliver. As effectively as Sandler projects the volatility of a superannuated teen-ager, he is too sluggish and inexpressive a screen personality for his antics to convey kinetic excitement. Happy's tantrums, which the movie pretends are liberating explosions of self-expression, aren't nearly maniacal enough to reach comic delirium.

The movie desperately relies on such sight gags as elaborate miniature-golf stunts, and the increasingly mangled prosthetic hand of Happy's athletic golf coach, to generate the occasional smile.

HAPPY GILMORE

Cast: Adam Sandler (Happy Gilmore), Christopher McDonald (Shooter), Frances Bay (Grandma) and Bob Barker (as himself).

Directed by Dennis Dugan; written by Tim Herlihy and Adam Sandler; director of photography, Arthur Albert; edited by Jeff Gourson; music by Mark Mothersbaugh; production designer, Perry Andelin Blake; produced by Robert Simonds; released by Universal Pictures. Running time: 92 minute

Rating: ``Happy Gilmore'' is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). It has gross humor and mild sexual innuendo

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