Producers: Adam Sandler, Tim Herlihy, Jack Giarraputo and Robert Simonds   Director: Kyle Newacheck   Screenplay: Tim Herlihy and Adam Sandler   Cast: Adam Sandler, Julie Bowen, Christopher McDonald, Benny Safdie, Ben Stiller, Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, John Daly, Haley Joel Osment, Jackie Sandler, Sadie Sandler, Sunny Sandler, Maxwell Jacob Friedman, Philip Schneider, Ethan Cutkosky, Conor Sherry, Kevin Nealon, Jon Lovitz, Rob Schneider, Lavell Crawford, Dennis Dugan, Kym Whitley, John Farley, Travis Kelce, Boban Marjanovic, Steve Buscemi, Eric André, Martin Herlihy and Margaret Qualley   Distributor: Netflix

Grade: C-

Though Adam Sandler has occasionally taken on more mature roles in serious fare, on screen he’s mostly adhered to the bratty man-child image he embodied from his earliest Saturday Night Live days, and with “Happy Gilmore 2” he literally returns to his roots after nearly three decades, resurrecting the off-the-wall golf champ he introduced in 1996.  The result is more a two-hour exercise in fan service, nostalgia and friends-and-family partying than a real movie, but die-hard fans will probably eat it up; others are likely to find it insufferable.

The ramshackle script, written like the original by Sandler and longtime collaborator Tim Herlihy, follows two basic story threads.  One is a redemption arc: Happy descended into depression and alcoholism after accidentally killing his wife Virginia (Julie Bowen) with an errant golf ball.  (Her spectral appearances to bolster his spirits at especially bad moments indicates that she bears no grudge.)  Left with five kids—four boys and a girl—to raise, and vowing never to golf again, he spiraled downward, though his rough-housing Happy-like sons (Maxwell Jacob Friedman, Ethan Cutkosky, Philip Fine Schneider and Conor Sherry) and demure daughter Vienna (Sunny Sandler) all love him dearly.  And when she gets an opportunity to attend a prestigious ballet school in Paris, he’s faced with the need to raise three hundred grand in tuition money.  Seeing no alternative, he returns to the links, recovering his old unique talent after a brief stint in the doldrums.  He also joins a comic AA clone headed by his old enemy Hal L (Ben Stiller), who constantly poo-poos his effort to stay sober.

The second thread focuses on a league for a modernized, supercharged form of golf called Maxi Golf promoted by Frank Manatee (Benny Safdie), CEO of an energy drink company.  Happy rebuffs the invitation to join it, and instead becomes the star of the traditionalist old-timers’ chance to derail the new operation by winning a tournament pitting him against Manatee’s star player Billy Jenkins (Haley Joel Osment), one of the golfers that the evil founder has surgically altered to improve their driving ability.  (Don’t ask how.)  Manatee also plays psychological warfare by arranging the release of Happy’s old rival Shooter McGavin (Christopher McDonald) from the mental institution where’s he’s been locked up for thirty years.  That ploy, though, turns out badly for him in the end, as McGavin has a redemption arc too.

This bipartite but interlocking plot is, however, just a skeleton for loading down the movie with scads of cameos and references to the original “Gilmore.”  Faces from that picture pop up over and over—most in brief snippets, unlike McDonald’s lengthy turn.  (Rob Schneider, for instance, shows up as a midget on a bike.)  When including somebody is impossible, Sandler and Herlihy simply devise an easy alternative: Carl Weathers’ death made it impossible for his reappearance as Happy’s old mentor Chubbs Peterson, for example, so they merely introduce Levell Crawford as his son Slim, who also happens to have a prosthetic hand for comic purposes. And celebrities—golfers, other sports figures, random buddies, Sandler family members—show up just long enough to demonstrate their general unfamiliarity with acting.  All the padding stretches “Gilmore 2” out to nearly an unconscionable two hours.  Needless to say, there’s a heaping helping of tastelessness to deal with as well:  one recurrent bit, about the rowdily careless attitude of workers at airports, might strike one as less than hilarious given the recent spate of crashes and near-misses involving passenger planes.

There are a few bright stops amid all the ruckus.  Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, aka Bad Bunny, is actually amusing as Gilmore’s new caddy Oscar, and old pro McDonald seizes on the chance to make Shooter a near-star, despite the burden of scatological humor he must bear.  On the other hand, Travis Kelce, as Oscar’s nasty boss at the club restaurant where the kid’s originally a waiter, shows no aptitude in front of the camera (and has to endure a grossly humiliating scene presented as Oscar’s emotional “happy place”), and Stiller’s prolonged bit is a laugh-free bust.  As for Sandler himself, apart from the scenes in which he has to look morose over Virginia’s demise and his lack of paternal attention to the kids, he simply falls back on his familiar comic shouting.

Technically the movie is hardly any great shakes, but it meets the standards of your usual Happy Madison production, with a prosaic production design by Perry Andelin Blake and equally nondescript cinematography by Zak Mulligan, while Rupert Gregson-Williams’ score tries to emphasize how amused we’re supposed to be.  But Brian Robinson’s editing is sluggish, though Sandler’s typically lethargic mien and Kyle Newacheck’s lackadaisical direction really don’t allow for crisp cutting.

The movie will certainly attract eyes on Netflix, and leave us all hoping that it won’t encourage Sandler to revisit his other early comedies—please, no “Billy Madison 2” or “Waterboy Part Deux.”  At least we can be sure that a “Little Nicky Is Back” is not in the cards.

Producers: Lars Knudsen, Ari Aster and Ann Ruark   Director: Ari Aster   Screenplay: Ari Aster   Cast: Joaquin Phoenix, Pedro Pascal, Emma Stone, Austin Butler, Luke Grimes, Deirdre O’Connell, Micheal Ward, Clifton Collins Jr., William Belleau, Amélie Hoeferle, Cameron Mann, Matt Gomez Hidaka, Landall Goolsby and Elise Falanga   Distributor: A24

Grade: C-

Overnight success is a double-edged sword.  On the one hand, it can open doors and encourage risk-taking.  On the other, it can lead to overreach and destructive self-indulgence.  A prime example of the danger is Michael Cimono; the encomia the director received for “The Deer Hunter” led to the notorious debacle of “Heaven’s Gate.”

The trajectory of Ari Aster’s career is less precipitous, but the comparison holds.  His debut, the cerebral horror movie “Hereditary” (2018), was a surprise success with both critics and audiences.  It led A24 to give him carte blanche for “Midsommar” (2019), a disappointing follow-up but one that retained a tenacious hold on viewers.  Then came “Beau is Afraid” (2023), a lugubrious, self-important flop.  Still A24 continued its support of a man who’s come to be revered by some as a singular auteur of the anxiety that marks modernity, and the result is “Eddington.”

This is the rare film that can be described as fascinatingly awful—a big swing by a talented director that proves a monumental strike-out.  To be sure, it holds your attention even as your mouth droops in astonishment and you’re forced to suppress a giggle or a groan, and it succeeds as a provocation likely to elicit a lot of acrimonious argument.  But one suspects that few will admit to enjoying it; it’s the sort of massive misfire one might be pleased to have seen while never wanting to see it again.

To define what “Eddington” is about in the broadest terms, its theme is the socio-political polarization of America.  The darkly satirical modern anti-Western offers a microcosm of the destructive impact of the phenomenon through events in the titular New Mexico town, a tiny burg—population around 2,500—roiled by drought and a move to build a huge data center nearby that will worsen the water problem.  The already-existing divisions, which also include the presence of a sovereign tribal nation next door, are exacerbated when the pandemic hits in 2019 and state and national lockdowns, mask mandates and social distancing lead to people becoming increasingly isolated and, often, being drawn to conspiracy theories.  (Trump’s election 2016 and the emergence of QAnon the following year are reminders that the pandemic merely accelerated ongoing fissures.)

The divisions in Eddington by May of 2020, when the plot begins, are crystalized in its two most powerful citizens, Mayor Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal), a soft-spoken but ambitious progressive who’s in favor of the pandemic restrictions as well as the data center, which he portrays in his schmaltzy re-election material as a potential economic boon, and Joe Cross (Joaquin Phoenix), the county sheriff, a gruff, old-style lawman who’s resistant to enforcing the new restrictions (an asthmatic, he says that masks interfere with breathing and anyway are socially disruptive limitations on personal freedom) and suspicious of the changes the data center will bring.

And there are personal issues.  Cross believes that Garcia once got Joe’s wife Louise (Emma Stone) pregnant and forced her to have an abortion, and that the trauma has left Louise emotionally fragile: she spends most of her time sewing little fabric dolls with oddball faces.  Joe’s hostility is encouraged by his mother-in-law Dawn (Deirdre O’Connell), a conspiracy theorist who’s moved in with the Crosses for the duration and shares what she finds on the internet, including the rants of smooth-talking Vernon Jefferson Peak (Austin Butler), whose theories focus on bands of pedophiles who kidnap and abuse children.

Riled by what’s happening, Joe, who sees himself standing up for traditional values, impulsively throws his Stetson into the mayoral race, festooning his car with right-wing slogans like “Your (sic) being manipulated.” His dim-bulb deputy Guy (Luke Grimes) is all in, but his trainee Michael (Micheal Ward) is less enthusiastic, especially after the George Floyd incident brings the Black Lives Matter movement to town.  It’s led by firebrand Sarah (Amélie Hoeferle), his ex-girlfriend, who berates him as a black man for choosing to join Joe in trying to squelch her street protests.  Drawn into the fray are Garcia’s rebellious son Eric (Matt Gomez Hidaka), who’s sweet on Sarah, and another local boy, Brian (Cameron Mann), whose interest in her leads to regurgitating her rhetoric so enthusiastically that when he spouts his newfound beliefs at the family dinner table his astonished father (Dan Davidson) blurts out, “Are you retarded?  You’re white!”  (Apologies: that’s the script, not the reviewer.)

Up to this point “Eddington” has been relatively even-handed in skewering both sides of the communal rift:  Garcia seems reasonable, but has his own axes to grind, and Cross has a bit of the old-style Western hero about him despite his obvious flaws.  Now, however, the sheriff makes bad choices, and the film becomes essentially a portrait of his deterioration, in effect entering Jim Thompson territory—the Thompson of “The Killer Inside Me” and “Pop. 1280.” Cross launches a personal attack on Garcia that backfires and destroys both his marriage and his political aspirations; a humiliating confrontation with his now-gloating opponent pushes him over the edge.  In a mix of desperation and cunning, he engages in an escalating series of horrific acts that affect Garcia, Michael, and Lodge (Clifton Collins Jr.), a homeless man whose incoherent rants have infused the film from the first scene.  The fact that Cross is aware that tribal policeman Jimenez (William Belleau) is watching his every step only further enrages him.

As he explodes, so does the town, literally—as a result, it appears, of “outside agitators.”  Just who they represent is unclear.  Perhaps they’re the violent left-wing radicals so many fear; perhaps they’re agents of solidgoldmagikarp, the corporation behind the proposed data center, using the disorder for its own purposes.  (If the latter, it would increase the bleak irony of the film’s coda.)

But it doesn’t really matter, because what Aster wants to convey isn’t such plot details but the overwhelming fear of a national paroxysm that permeated the population in 2020, and anxiety about the prospect of apocalyptic violence many still see on the horizon—portrayed here in miniature as a spray of automatic weapon fire that goes on for so long in would make Tarantino blanch.  The film is ultimately a warning, or perhaps a premonition, about where the country’s polarization can lead, though in the process of making that point it takes aim at more targets than one might care to count.

And while the advertising suggests that the film is an ensemble piece, it’s really a showcase for Phoenix, following the sheriff’s dramatic arc, which the actor fills with his now familiar moody, mumbling routine in a performance that, like the film itself, is lumbering, showy and rather obvious.  Everyone else in the cast is relegated to relative cameos—some are longer than others, but all revolve around Cross, and few of the supporting players make much of an impression save perhaps Butler, who conveys a smoothly sinister vibe in just a few scenes, and Collins, who jabbers up a storm. But all do what Aster asks of them.

So do the technical crew.  The production design by Elliott Hostetter and costumes by Anna Terrazas capture the feel of this depressed little town, while Darius Khondji’s lustrous cinematography conveys the bleak, dusty reality of the New Mexico locations.  Lucian Johnston’s editing, languid in even the final gun battle, is perfectly in synch with the director’s ponderous pacing, and the score by Bobby Krlic and Daniel Pemberton catches the sense of creeping dread Aster is after as well.

But while one can admire the ambition of “Eddington,” it’s the very definition of a film that’s overstuffed and undercooked—filled with big ideas but too unwieldy to do any of them justice.