Happy Gilmore Movie: Why Characters Need To Die And How To Make Death Scenes Believable?

(*Warning for possible spoilers for the Happy Gilmore 1996 sports comedy movie)

Happy Gilmore (#ad) is about an aspiring hockey player who finds that his talent lies elsewhere and who ends up playing golf for the sake of his grandmother.

Happy Gilmore = so funny that no words can describe it

Happy Gilmore is such a laugh-out-loud humorous film (seriously, you might just find yourself laughing at so many different parts of the movie) that it can be hard to believe that something seriously terrible and horrible could ever happen in said movie.

Who is Chubbs?

The storyline introduces us to this character named Chubbs Peterson (played by Carl Weathers) who is a former golf player. He was pretty well-known and he was a brilliant golf player, but he had to cut his career short thanks to having one of his hands bitten off by an alligator.

That’s bad and unfortunate, of course, but the movie manages to present this in a humorous and funny way that you can’t help but either smile or laugh or do both.

Funny scenes with Chubbs in Happy Gilmore

It seems almost like a joke, like this incident is just for comic relief purposes especially when we see scenes like having Chubbs’ fake wooden hand get run over by a car or having him shake hands (with the fake hand, of course) with the title character (Happy Gilmore) and having said wooden hand get broken, making it seem like his real fingers got damaged.

Is what happened to Chubbs a necessary evil?

As such, it can be easy to forget or simply overlook what happened to Chubbs. It’s too bad that he can’t play golf anymore, but he’s not the focus of this film and his main purpose seems to be to just teach Happy Gilmore (played by Adam Sandler) how to play golf so what happened to his hand seems to be a necessary evil.

After all, if his hand hadn’t gotten bitten off by an alligator, he would undoubtedly still be busy playing golf and would thus have no time nor the interest to teach Happy about the sport or to even convince or talk Gilmore into playing said sport.

Death scene in a comedy movie! Who would have thought?

With all that said, who would have expected that Chubbs would actually die just because he’d already fulfilled his apparent purpose in the film?

When the death scene in question was actually happening, I thought this was yet another way to make the movie funny and to get the audience to laugh or smile. The scene didn’t even seem dark at all.

When Chubbs fell out of the window, I didn’t think he would actually die. It seemed like this was going to be played for laughs once more or that, even if he were to get badly injured, he’d just end up getting hospitalized and that he wouldn’t actually die.

Realism in Happy Gilmore

It’s really sad and seemingly unbelievable that he had to die especially since this film is supposed to be a comedy. And yet I thought that this added realism to the story and made it more believable.

I mean, if someone fell out of the window, they’d either die or get horribly injured. It’s also possible that Chubbs got a heart attack after seeing the head of that alligator.

So it makes sense that he died even if we’d rather that he was alive and well instead. What did you think of that death scene in the movie? Do you think it fits? Do you wish that Chubbs hadn’t died?


*Notes:
- Image with added text was modified by Freya Yuki based on the image by sinvia (CC:BY) from deviantArt
- Image is meant to represent Chubbs falling out of a window since the figure in said image also looks as if she’s falling
- First pic is from Amazon.com; link shown above
- YouTube video features the Happy Gilmore trailer

Happy Gilmore Movie: How To Prove You Love Your Grandmother?

(Warning for possible spoilers for the Happy Gilmore 1996 sports comedy movie, which is about this guy who starts playing golf for the sake of someone he cares about even though his passion is really to play hockey)

The Happy Gilmore (#ad) film may be a comedy (and it’s really quite hilarious and funny), but it also has a number of heartwarming moments. Those scenes may not make you shed buckets of tears, but that doesn’t make them any less touching.

Happy Gilmore really loves his grandmother

Since we got introduced to the title character, Happy Gilmore (played by Adam Sandler), it was quickly established that he really loves and cares about his grandmother. This fact was quickly proven so many times during the course of the film.

We saw how upset Happy was when his grandmother’s things and house were taken away by the IRS, so much so that he even punched the guy that was telling him about this (admittedly, it does seem like he’s got some violent tendencies, but that still shows his love for his grandmother).

Happy even offered to let her stay at his place when she had to leave her house. He was reluctant to leave her at a nursing home.

He was even willing to pay extra money just to ensure that she was treated in the best way possible (not that that worked out too well, but let’s not get into that now). He was also very determined to acquire the money he needed in order to get back his grandma’s house.

And that was why he started playing golf even though he knew nothing about the sport and what he really wanted to do was play hockey. He even found the time to visit his grandmother at the nursing home.

What is love?

Is it playing a sport that you don’t even like for the sake of the one you care about? Or is it giving up playing a sport you’ve come to enjoy?

One of the really admirable things about Happy Gilmore and what really showed his love for his grandmother was how he was willing to give up playing golf just so he could get her house back.

By that point in the movie, he was already a bit into the sport and he was already dating Virginia, the main female character, who wanted him to stay in the golf tournament.

So it really said something with how Happy was willing to give up so much and sacrifice so much, all for the sake of his grandmother and seeing her well and happy. What do you think about this?


*Notes:
- Image with added text was modified by Freya Yuki (CC:BY-SA) based on the image by mikanxsakura (CC:BY-SA) from deviantArt
- Image is meant to represent Happy and his grandmother
- First pic is from Amazon.com; link shown above
- YouTube video features the Happy Gilmore movie trailer