"Happy Gilmore 2," "Sunday Best: The Untold Story of Ed Sullivan" and "Zarna Garg: One in a Billion:" My Movie Picks and Pans for July 2025

[I review "Happy Gilmore 2," the documentary "Sunday Best: The Untold Story of Ed Sullivan" and Zarna Garg's comedy stand-up "One in a Billion"]

Happy Gilmore 2 (2025)

First there was "Happy Gilmore."  Now here he is again 29 years later.

Okay, since you know I hate sequels (except "The Godfather Part II), you may be wondering, "Rosy, why are you reviewing a sequel to "Happy Gilmore?"  Well, my peeps, I didn't see the first one, so in a way this isn't really a sequel for me.  I don't have anything to compare it with.  I am seeing it with new eyes.  And since "Happy Gilmore 2" is currently the #1 watched movie on Netflix right now and Adam Sandler has been on every talk show on the planet hyping this movie, I thought I had better do my due diligence and take a look.

So if you saw the first one, you know that Happy started out playing hockey but despite his powerful slapshot, his temper and poor skating ability limited his career.  But then he discovered golf where his slapshot came in handy and he went on to win his first Tour Championship in 1996. 

Now 29 years later, we learn that Happy went on to have a successful golf career winning five more championships.  He also had five children with wife Virginia (Julie Bowen), but sadly, tragedy has struck Happy.  Virginia is no longer with us, he has lost everything including his grandma's house (again), and he has become an alcoholic using a plethora of objects as flasks so he can stay "hydrated (my favorite is his drinking out of a cucumber)!" 

So Happy has quit golf and is now not so happy.

His kids Gordie (Maxwell Friedman), Wayne (Ethan Cutkosky), Bobby (Philip Schneider) and Terry (Conor Sherry) have moved out and are working to help support Happy and their sister Vienna (Sunny Sandler, Adam's real life daughter), who wants to go to ballet school in Paris.  The $75k per year cost is daunting to Happy, but then he is approached by Frank Manatee (Benny Safdie), the CEO of Maxi Energy Drink and whose bad breath is a recurring motif in the film. Manatee is starting a new golf league called Maxi Golf, a league that make golf more fun and exciting - kind of what Banana Baseball is to baseball.  Manatee wants Happy to be the league's star.  Happy declines but wanting to find the money to pay for Vienna to go to ballet school and with encouragement from his friend, John Daly (playing himself), he starts to clean himself up by joining a support group, "Alkies for Life," coincidentally run by his old arch nemesis, Hal (Ben Stiller). Happy works on his golf skills, gets his mojo back, and eventually joins the next Tour Championship where Maxi Golf is rising fast. Manatee challenges the Tour Championship golfers to a tournament - the top five Maxi Golf golfers vs. the top five old timers - and the film culminates in a no-holds barred golf-off.

There are ups and downs to Happy's return to golf including his struggles with alcohol and Maxi Golf turns out to be a bit dodgy. Will Happy be happy again?

Lots of golf action and cameos from real golf champs. Scottie Scheffler, Rory McIlroy, Brooks Koepka (and his wife!) and Bryson DeChambeau make up Happy's team against Maxi Golf and Fred Couples, Nick Faldo, Jack Nicklaus, Lee Trevino and others also make appearances. There is even a spoof on Scottie Scheffler's real life arrest before last year's PGA Championship.

Acting and celebrity cameos also abound - Ben Stiller, Julie Bowen, Kevin Nealon, Christopher McDonald, and Dennis Dugan reprise their roles and everyone from Travis Kelce to Bad Bunny to Ken Jennings to SNL alums seem to be in this along with others - too many to mention. Even Adam Sandler's real life family members make appearances. It starts out being fun to try to spot who's who but as more and more celebrities crowd the film, it becomes exhausting and actually distracts from the story.

Written by Tim Herlihy and Sandler and directed by Kyle Newacheck, the first half of the film is actually quite sweet. However, in the second half of the film, the "shark jumped," if you know what I mean, and it just got too silly and went on too long.  And though there are clips from the first film to try to remind you of what happened and who some of the characters relate to Happy, some character relationships are unexplained this time around (not sure why Hal (Stiller) was Happy's arch nemesis or why Shooter McGavin (McDonald) was in a mental hospital - or frankly why he was in the movie - or why John Daly was living in Happy's garage), but you can mostly enjoy this film without having seen the original.  

Sandler is not the best actor in the world, but there is something endearing about him. He is so earnest and sincere in what he does that it shines through and makes you root for his character.

Rosy the Reviewer says...if you enjoyed the first film, are an Adam Sandler fan or enjoy your golf with lots of hijinks, you might enjoy this, but if you don't like slapstick comedy and very broad humor (bare butts and bad breath and fart jokes abound) then, you might not.  But all in all, the film has some fun moments and a good message. It is all about rooting for the underdog, second chances and redemption.  It's upbeat and don't we need that right now? (Netflix)

Sunday Best: The Untold Story of Ed Sullivan (2025)

What you didn't know about Ed Sullivan.

Okay, so you aren't sure you even know who Ed Sullivan was. "The Ed Sullivan Show" was the longest-running variety show in U.S. broadcast history.  On Sunday night, it featured singers, dancers, acrobats, puppets, you name it.  "America's Got Talent" is the closest thing we have to that today, but back in the 1950's and sixties, when there were few TV channels, most Americans - 35-50 million of them - all sat down at the same time to watch Ed Sullivan and then talk about it the next day.

Sullivan was the first to have Elvis on TV (though they only filmed him from the chest up - he wasn't called Elvis the Pelvis for nothing) as well as the Beatles.  I, of course, was a huge Beatles fan and the night they were on, my girlfriend, Linda, and I sat on the floor in front of the TV screaming along with the girls in the TV audience. My parents shook their heads.

Though there are some biographical elements in this documentary directed by the late Sacha Jenkins, this film is less about Sullivan's personal life and more about the impact "The Ed Sullivan Show" had on television history and civil rights, which I did not know about and you might not have known about either.

What I didn't know was that Sullivan broke the "color barrier" by featuring black artists on the show at a time when racial discrimination was still rampant.  Though the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled segregated schools unconstitutional in 1954 and the Civil Rights Act passed in 1964, racism never really went away and few black artists ever appeared on TV.  Southern politicians wanted segregated TV shows. They did not want to see black performers on the same stage as white performers. But Sullivan had full control of who performed on his show and he went against sponsors and critics to showcase black talent. "The Ed Sullivan Show" was one of the first mainstream shows to do that.

Harry Belafonte, Stevie Wonder at 13, Nat King Cole, Nina Simone, James Brown, The Jackson 5, The Temptations and The Supremes all performed on the show and snippets of their performances are included in the documentary along with Belafonte, Smokey Robinson, Otis Williams and others weighing in on the influence this show had on American life.

Though Sullivan died in 1974, his voice is recreated as narrator and features his comments on racial issues over the years from his letters, articles and columns.

So why did Sullivan care so much?

Growing up in Port Chester, New York, in an Irish-American family, Sullivan played baseball and played against teams with black players.  He believed in integration from an early age, possibly because the Irish had also been through discrimination when they settled in America.  He recalls how some of his team mates did not want to play against black players, but he was taught "to respect the rights of the underdog."

"I always resented [those players that didn't want to play against black players] very deeply because the Irish had been through that...My parents knew these things were wrong, and they were not just broad-minded, but sensible."

So how did Sullivan, who started out as a newspaper sports writer end up hosting a TV show?

He was later assigned a newspaper Broadway column which led to his being the master of ceremonies for the Harvest Moon Ball, a famous New York amateur dance contest.  At the time, TV was new and someone was needed to host a Sunday night variety show - "The Toast of the Town" - which he did and that eventually became "The Ed Sullivan Show." 

Through a series of opportune events, Sullivan, an unlikely TV personality, became the host of the longest running variety show in TV history, one that gave opportunities to black performers who until then were not seen on TV. And that was not received well. There were protests about black performers appearing on the same show as white performers and Sullivan was told not to shake hands with the black performers or touch them. Sponsors were targeted. Hard to believe all of that was happening just 75 years ago. But Sullivan went against the protests and not only shook hands with black performers, he embraced them.

Belafonte, who appeared on the show 10 times, says that Sullivan "pushed the envelope as far as the envelope could be pushed," especially when CBS threatened to stop him from performing the first time in 1953 because of his left-wing politics and Sullivan went to bat for him with the network.

Sullivan and his voice and mannerisms have been made fun of by comedians over the years because yes, he was not your typical TV host. He was not classically handsome, often called "The Great Stone Face" and was very stiff on camera, but he made his mark on TV with a show that ran for 23 years. TV Guide ranked it 15th in the top "50 Greatest TV shows of All Time." But more importantly, Sullivan made a huge contribution to racial equality.

Sullivan died three days after the show ended.  He died on a Sunday night.

Rosy the Reviewer says...The Ed Sullivan Show was "appointment TV" of the highest order.  I was there every Sunday night with my family and knowing what Sullivan did to promote black artists makes me very glad I was. And you can be there too, for a little while, when you watch this highly recommended documentary (Netflix).

Zarna Garg: One in a Billion (2023)

Comedian Zarna Garg's first comedy special.

Born in India, Garg grew up in Mumbai.  Her mother died when she was 14 and her father tried to force her into an arranged marriage.  Zarna ran away and eventually she emigrated to the U.S. to live with her sister in Ohio. She eventually earned a law degree, married and was a stay-at-home mom for 16 years until her children encouraged her to try stand-up comedy.  I guess she was a funny mom.  She performed at an open mic in New York City in 2018 and in 2021 won Kevin Hart's comedy competition (Lyft Comics) on Peacock and in 2022 she was highlighted as "one of the gutsiest women comedians in America" on "Gutsy" on Apple TV hosted by Hillary and Chelsea Clinton.

I first saw her interviewed on "The View" this year when she was making the rounds promoting her memoir, "This American Woman: One in a Billion," so named because she credits American women for giving her the strength to fend off the expectations of her culture and go her own way, especially starting a comedy career in her 40's. She thinks our expression of "one in a million" is not much of a compliment. It's "cute." India has a population of over a billion, so where she is now from where she started, she is "one in a billion." Now that's a compliment.  I thought her story was so compelling that I wanted to read her book which I did and which in turn led me to want to see her comedy routine. 

Which I did.

Written by Garg and directed by Brian Volk-Weiss, this is her first stand-up comedy special and she is very funny and endearing.

Her family-friendly routine takes the audience through her journey, makes fun of the cultural differences between Indian parents and American parents and family expectations (no art majors in Indian families), complains about her mother-in-law (she stalks her TikTok account), explains why Indian kids are smarter and win all of the spelling bees (their parents don't tell them to follow their dreams like American parents do, but to be practical), and more. 

Rosy the Reviewer says...a fresh addition to the comedy world (Amazon Prime.  You can also catch her latest special "Zarna Garg: Practical People Win" now streaming on Hulu and find her book at your local library)

See You Next Time!

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