12 Best Movies Like Happy Gilmore

For his second major headlining role as Hollywood’s newest comedy star, following “Billy Madison,” Adam Sandler chipped “Happy Gilmore” into theaters in 1996. Sandler plays the title character, a failed hockey player who reluctantly finds himself power driving his way through golf in order to pay his grandma’s tax debt and save her home. Along the way, his boisterous attitude and fiery temper not only clash with golf’s conservative culture, but with current top pro Shooter McGavin (Christopher McDonald), who doesn’t like sharing the spotlight. It has all the classic sports comedy beats, mixed with Sandler’s own signature brand of slapstick goofiness.

When looking for other movies to watch that are similar to “Happy Gilmore,” a journey through the best sport comedy movies of all time is the easiest route to take. But there are a number of sports comedies that more specifically relate to “Happy Gilmore” and what it brings to the genre. First and foremost, there are other golf comedies as well as other hockey comedies that will appeal to “Happy Gilmore” fans for obvious reasons. 

While 2025’s “Happy Gilmore 2” seems like a conspicuous choice, it’s too early to tell yet whether that Netflix-produced sequel is ultimately up to par. But there are other Adam Sandler sports romps to check out, including another one that’s also among his best movies. “Happy Gilmore” also isn’t the only movie where an athlete from one sport comes to find that their talents can be applied to another sport. And on top of all that, there are a few movies that might not check any of those specific boxes, but just share the vibes of “Happy Gilmore.” 

When one says the words “golf comedy,” one of two movies instantly come to mind for most people — “Happy Gilmore” or “Caddyshack.” Whichever one you consider the ultimate golf comedy leans heavily on your age. Millennials and younger grew up with “Happy Gilmore,” while Gen Xers and older have a bigger soft spot for 1980’s “Caddyshack.” Of course, there really isn’t any reason why anyone has to pick one or the other, when the best move is to just watch them both in a double-header of golf comedy classics. 

While “Happy Gilmore” focuses mostly on the sport itself, “Caddyshack,” as its title implies, more heavily revolves around the people who keep golf courses and country clubs running. Most of the actual golfers — save for Chevy Chase’s cool, funny Ty Webb — are typically the butt of the joke, as the movie is largely told from the perspective of the caddies, valets, cart staff, and Bill Murray’s iconic groundskeeper character. They aren’t able to directly take on the sport like Happy Gilmore does, but they deconstruct the sport and dismantle its stale conventions in their own equally funny ways. 

In our list of the best golf movies of all time, we actually ranked this underrated Kevin Costner film above both “Happy Gilmore” and “Caddyshack.” Costner, who knows his way around a classic sports movie thanks to the likes of “Bull Durham” and “Field of Dreams,” stars as a former next big thing who blew his chance at golf superstardom. Having to settle instead for being a golf instructor, he finds himself in a love triangle with one of his students (Rene Russo) and her pro golfer boyfriend (Don Johnson). He then decides to finally mount his big comeback in an effort to prove himself and win her heart in this charming sports comedy/romcom hybrid. 

It may not have the laugh-out-loud moments or endlessly quotable lines of those other two golf comedies — and there isn’t an animatronic gopher dancing to a Kenny Loggins song — but “Tin Cup” brings a more grounded and realistic view of the sport while also not being afraid to laugh at it. Unfortunately, it got largely overlooked at the time, and not enough people have since found their way back to it for this 1996 film to become the cult classic it deserves to be.

Sports comedy classic “Slap Shot” depicts a version of professional hockey that Happy Gilmore would be right at home in, which actually seems to reward violence, aggression, trash talking, and players who are rough around the edges. It centers around a veteran minor league hockey player named Reggie Dunlop (Paul Newman) who decides to bring in the wildly unpredictable Hanson brothers (Steve Carlson and David Hanson) to save his failing team. The result is a hard-R sports movie that literally doesn’t pull any punches.

Even though he has multiple cinematic masterpieces in his filmography, 1977’s “Slap Shot” still rightfully earns its place among the greatest Paul Newman movies. In fact, Newman once said that Reggie Dunlop was one of his favorite characters to play, which is high praise indeed considering the actor also played iconic roles like Butch Cassidy, Fast Eddie Felson, and “Cool Hand” Luke. There were two direct-to-video “Slap Shot” sequels decades later, in the 2000s, but it’s best to just pretend they never happened. 

Though many people dismissed it as a lesser redux of “Slap Shot,” 2011’s “Goon” does plenty to carve out its own identity. In fact, beyond both movies revolving around the violent side of hockey and rebels of the sport, the two movies actually don’t have all that much in common. Written by Jay Baruchel and frequent Seth Rogen collaborator Evan Goldberg, “Goon” is loosely based on the autobiography of a hockey enforcer, a controversial role wherein a player is called on to enact retribution on perceived bad sportsmanship by the opposing team.

Sean William Scott plays Douglass “Doug The Thug” Glatt, a bouncer-turned-enforcer for his local minor league hockey team. His proficiency in the role turns the team’s fortunes around, which makes him popular among fans — but elicits mixed reactions from some of his teammates and complicates his personal life. It’s a fantastic showcase for Scott, who has long been saddled with his one-note “American Pie” character and the Stiffler-esque roles he’s often cast to play even though he has much more talent and range than that. His performance was specifically called out in many of the reviews that earned “Goon” a solid 81% on Rotten Tomatoes. 

Shifting from adult-oriented hockey movies to family-friendly ones — which is important since the PG-13 antics of “Happy Gilmore” fall squarely between those two extremes — is the Disney classic “The Mighty Ducks.” The 1992 movie stands out among a very crowded field of underdog kids’ sports films, largely because it’s just a more polished, sweeter, and funnier take on the genre. It’s also one of the few examples of a fictional sports team later becoming a real one, plus several young cast members from “The Mighty Ducks” stopped acting soon after, arguably making the movie all the more special as so much of its ensemble is associated solely with this film.

There is also a more specific reason why “Happy Gilmore” and “The Mighty Ducks” have a connection beyond hockey. Siblings Tammy and Tommy Duncan (Jane Plank and Danny Tamberelli, respectively) are recruited to join the floundering Ducks not because they play hockey, but because they are figure skaters. It’s reasoned that having proficiency in ice skating is half the battle — especially since it’s something a lot of the other Ducks struggle with — and the Duncans just need to be taught some basic puck handling skills to become valuable members of the team. “Happy Gilmore” wasn’t the first, and isn’t the only, sports movie that follows the conceit of someone taking specific skills from one sport and applying them to an entirely different game. 

Of all the movies on this list, 1992’s “The Cutting Edge” is the one in which the actual sports part of the movie is the closest to being a B plot. But it’s another one in which a hockey player is forced into another sport and has to get over the culture shock of that sport and learn to love it in time for the movie’s happy ending. In this case, the athlete in question is Doug Dorsey (D.B. Sweeney), an Olympic hockey player who suffers a head injury during the games and can no longer play. At those same Olympics, figure skater Kate Moseley (Moira Kelly) has a tiff with her partner and it ends up costing them the gold.

Fast forward to the lead-up to the next Winter Olympics. Doug still isn’t playing hockey, and Kate hasn’t been able to find another partner. Guess what happens next! It’s a far-fetched premise, and the romcom-ness of it all takes center stage, but “The Cutting Edge” is still a charming sports comedy that is better than the sum of its parts if you give it a chance. It’s certainly a must-watch for those who consider the romance between Happy and Virginia (Julie Bowen) to be their favorite part of “Happy Gilmore.”  

When Looper readers revealed their favorite Adam Sandler movie via an online poll in 2023, “The Waterboy” finished surprisingly strong at third place. It was Sandler’s second sports movie after “Happy Gilmore,” and another one where the lead character comes to discover — essentially by accident — how skilled he is in the sport at the center of the movie. 

In the case of 1998’s “The Waterboy,” Bobby Boucher is a hydration assistant for a failing college football team. He is mercilessly teased by the players, until one day he’s had enough and lays one of them out in a fit of rage. The team’s coach (Henry Winkler) then decides that he can use Bobby’s tackling power as the team’s secret weapon. But while Happy needs to learn to control his temper to be a better golfer, Bobby’s is specifically triggered by his coach and teammates so that he can take out his aggression on his opponents on the field. 

It might not make the list of movie remakes that were better than the original, but the 2005 version of “The Longest Yard” still holds its own when compared to the cult classic 1974 original. Burt Reynolds, star of the original, even gamely returns for the remake — though in the latter, Sandler is playing the part Reynolds originated in the first place. 

That part is quarterback Paul “Wrecking” Crewe, an NFL player who is accused of game fixing, suspended from the game for five years, and then thrown in jail after a drunken car crash. While there, he assembles a team of his fellow inmates to play a game against a squad of prison guards. The actual point of the game involves political subtext and the way people in power misuse those beneath them for their own gain, but none of that is particularly important here — even less so than the similar subtexts in “Happy Gilmore.” You watch “The Longest Yard” for the funny, edgy football action, and the movie easily scores in that regard. 

Now we branch out a bit from the obvious connective threads to “Happy Gilmore” — hockey movies, golf movies, and Adam Sandler movies — to sports comedies that are more similar in tone and sense of humor. Let’s start with 2004’s “Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story,” which kicks off the hilarity by using a less obvious game to base a sports comedy around and only gets more ridiculous from there.

Peter LaFleur (Vince Vaughn), who runs fitness center Average Joe’s for people who don’t feel comfortable at regular gyms, finds his noble business threatened by nearby competitor Globo Gym. Globo Gym owner White Goodman (Ben Stiller) wants to expand into Average Joe’s space, and a dodgeball tournament ends up being the only way that Average Joe’s can make the money it needs to block the takeover. But White wants to make sure that doesn’t happen, and also joins that same tournament. What follows is a series of hilarious dodgeball matches with some of the best character actors in the business as the players, coaches, and commentators — including Alan Tudyk, Rip Torn, Gary Cole, Jason Bateman, and Stephen Root, to name a few. 

Baseball might not seem like the most ideal sport on which to base a raucous sports comedy. Sure, there are plenty of funny baseball movies. But how do you turn such a slow, deliberately-paced sport with long stretches of down time between short bursts of action into a laugh-a-minute slapstick comedy? Well, considering that those descriptors also apply to golf, and “Happy Gilmore” did that very thing, it probably shouldn’t be too much of a surprise that 1989’s “Major League” did what it did with baseball.

When the original owner of the Cleveland Indians dies, his wife wants to move the team to Miami. So she puts together a team of has-beens and misfits that she thinks will guarantee a losing season, which will allow her to enact a clause in the lease to let her relocate the team. Of course, the team eventually defies the odds and starts winning, and it’s specifically because the players are unorthodox underdogs that they become fan favorites. Sound familiar? “Major League” was enough of a hit to spawn several sequels of diminishing returns, with “Major League II” being the only one that’s remotely watchable — though it’s also entirely skippable. 

To get this out of the way immediately, we’re talking about the original “White Men Can’t Jump” that was released in 1992. The less said about the 2023 Hulu movie of the same name, the better. Of all the ways the pseudo-remake fails, the biggest might be that it was never going to replicate the incredible rapport of Wesley Snipes and Woody Harrelson in the original — who are so good that they should have continued as a comedy duo and made a movie together every few years.

Snipes is Sidney “Syd” Deane, a street basketball player who makes his living betting on and winning games. When he meets Billy Hoyle (Harrelson), whose “aw, shucks” demeanor and goofy fashion sense betray one of the most skilled ballers in all of Los Angeles, the two of them come up with the ultimate hustle. Their business arrangement doesn’t come without some professional and personal complications — and a whole lot of trash talking — but the two put on a series of clinics that embarrass their opponents and have been delighting sports comedy fans for over 30 years and counting.

While it was “Kung Fu Hustle” that first put filmmaker, actor, and martial artist Stephen Chow on the map outside of Asia, 2004’s “Shaolin Soccer” remains his best overall film to date. A lot of people dug into his back catalog after seeing “Kung Fu Hustle,” and were delighted to discover this hilarious and inventive hybrid of the sports and martial arts comedy subgenres. While Happy also beats up some of his opponents in “Happy Gilmore,” he always gets in trouble for it. Here, all the punching and kicking is somehow allowed. 

The Rotten Tomatoes critical consensus, under the movie’s well-earned 89% “Certified Fresh” score, sums up the film perfectly: “The plot is utterly ridiculous, and the soccer in the movie is unlike any ever played anywhere on Earth, but watching ‘Shaolin Soccer,’ you will probably find it impossible to care.” 

That plot, such that it is, sees a team of underdog losers have their day when they decide to bring their martial arts skills — and in some cases, outright magical powers — to the soccer field. Why don’t they just beat up their bullies? Why didn’t they think to apply their obvious athleticism to sports sooner? And most importantly, why does any of that matter when the results are so absurdly fun to watch?