What's up with this gooey-sweet teaser for Happy Gilmore 2?

Genuine question: Are there people out there who now think of Happy Gilmore as a touching underdog story about a relatable human being who overcomes his foibles? Or are we all still mostly just watching it to watch Bob Barker beat the shit out of Adam Sandler, and this bizarrely sweet teaser Netflix put out for the movie’s sequel is kind of tonally weird as hell?

Maybe we can blame it on Christmas, when the teaser actually rolled out (promoting the film’s upcoming 2025 release). But the portentous music, the adoring fans telling Sandler’s hockey player-turned-golfer “We’re happy you’re back, Mr. Gilmore,” and especially the shots of Julie Bowen and Sandler looking like they’ve come straight out of a tearjerker drama, all lead us to believe that someone promoting the film thinks there are people who are going to get genuinely choked up about the return of the Adam Sandler angry ’90s man-child who isn’t Billy Madison or the guy from Big Daddy. The trailer tries to get a little comedy in there by showing a confrontation between Happy and Christopher McDonald’s villainous Shooter McGavin, but the fact that the confrontation is happening in a graveyard makes us worry that this will somehow turn into a weepy emotional connection between the two former nemeses.

We genuinely don’t know what to make of this one. Happy Gilmore 2 is being directed by Kyle Newacheck, who we usually trust when it comes to comedy—he went from Workaholics to being one of the main directors of What We Do In The Shadows, so his credits are certainly a hell of a lot better than those of original Gilmore helmer Dennis Dugan, whose other Sandler collaborations include I Now Pronounce You Chuck And Larry, Jack And Jill, and both Grown Ups movies. (Dugan will still appear in the sequel, reprising a role he had in the original.) Maybe this is just some bizarre marketing, tapping into the delicate feelings of people with formative memories of this 28-year-old sports comedy about a man who hits the golf ball like a hockey puck. Weird, in any case.