'Happy Gilmore,' 'Naked Gun,' 'Spinal Tap': What's the deal with all these Gen X sequels?

Rob Reiner directs a mockumentary about the world’s worst heavy-metal band. A leading man known for his dramatic roles plays a bumbling cop in a lowbrow comedy from the makers of "Airplane!" And Adam Sandler stars as a violence-prone hockey player who tries to become a golf pro.

No, you’re not having flashbacks — those movies are all part of this year’s release calendar. If you’re of a certain age, several comedies that debuted during your youth — "This Is Spinal Tap," "The Naked Gun" and "Happy Gilmore" — are getting a new lease on life as sequels. The originals may be 30 or even 40 years in the past, but audiences have been eating them up so far. And more long-gestating sequels are coming next year.

Hollywood to Generation X: We want you back.

With the film industry basically recovered from the pandemic, studios appear to be courting a demographic for whom movies were once a way of life. Born roughly between the mid-1960s and the dawn of the 1980s, Gen Xers tend to have fond memories of early blockbusters like "Star Wars," teen movies like "Pretty in Pink" and grunge-era action movies like "Pulp Fiction." Now in their 40s and 50s, Gen Xers made up about 21% of moviegoers last year and were more eager than general audiences to increase their moviegoing frequency this year, according to a recent report from Fandango, the online ticket seller.

"They grew up in a really dynamic time for the movies, so it’s no wonder that we’re seeing remakes of movies that came out in the ‘80s and even the early ‘90s," Paul Dergarabedian, senior analyst for comScore, says. "There is an audience for that."

Chalk it up to a movie business that gravitates toward the familiar, says David A. Gross, author of the FranchiseRe newsletter that tracks weekly box office performance. "With these established stories, it doesn’t matter how long they’ve had a layoff," he explains. In fact, the longer the better: On average, sequels and remakes that arrive after 15 years or longer earn 14% more than the first film, according to his research, while those arriving sooner earn 18% less.

With certain films, Gross says, "I think the studio just looks at it and says: Hey, 35-to-55-year-olds. This was a smash 25 years ago, we can get them back."

Take "Happy Gilmore," the 1996 comedy that cemented Sandler's persona as a volatile man-child (perfect for a generation often defined as arrested adolescents) and became one of his best-loved comedies. Though "Happy Gilmore 2” arrived nearly 30 years later, on July 25, and without two of the original’s biggest laugh-getters (Bob Barker and Carl Weathers, both dead), Netflix mounted an aggressive marketing campaign that included a commercial for Subway sandwiches featuring Shooter McGavin, the lovable villain played by Christopher McDonald. As a sports comedy, the movie also drew excited coverage from ESPN.com, which published an exhaustive list of its 29 pro athlete cameos.

The result: Despite negative reviews, "Happy Gilmore 2” became a smash. It drew 46.7 million views over its opening three days to become Netflix’s No. 1 English-language film for that week, according to the streaming platform. It also broke a Nielsen ratings record with 2.9 billion viewing minutes in a single week, according to Variety.

Netflix’s success was followed in August by Paramount’s "The Naked Gun," a sequel to the 1988 film of the same name. Where the original starred Leslie Nielsen, a square-jawed leading man from the 1950s, as the inept cop Frank Drebin, the sequel turned to Liam Neeson, an Oscar nominee for "Schindler’s List," to play Drebin’s equally dopey son. Though Neeson had less experience in comedy than Nielsen (who had already starred in 1980’s "Airplane!"), he rolled easily with the film’s gross-out gags and painful puns, helping boost box office to $76 million worldwide so far.

Next up for Gen Xers is "Spinal Tap II: The End Continues," arriving Sept. 12 — a full 41 years after the original film, "This is Spinal Tap." It reunites original stars Christopher Guest, Michael McKean and Harry Shearer as the dim-bulb members of the hapless hard rock band Spinal Tap, this time trying to stage a farewell concert.

Though the original was only a modest success (it earned $4.4 million domestically), it became a word-of-mouth hit over the decades. Routines such as the miniature Stonehenge and the custom-made amplifier whose knobs go to 11 have become part of the lexicon for several generations.

The movie is "not just a Gen X classic, it’s just a classic," Liz Prato, 58, author of "Kids in America: A Gen X Reckoning," says. Today, as rock icons like The Rolling Stones and The Who enter their 80s, she says, the sequel makes perfect sense. "Those guys in Spinal Tap are such idiots, we know they haven’t responded to it with any dignity," Prato predicts.

It's telling that these nostalgic sequels are comedies, not dramas, says Clive Young, 57, a Rockville Centre-based lecturer who specializes in 1980s pop culture. "They speak to an easier time," Young says, and they encourage Gen-Xers to revisit the fondly remembered originals. "It’s an opportunity to sit down with your kids and say: Watch this — this is the stupid stuff we used to spend $7 to go see." (Sandler’s original "Happy Gilmore" became Netflix’s No. 3 film the week of the sequel’s debut.)

It might be the millennials’ turn next: Coming in 2026 are sequels to comedies from the late ‘90s and 2000s, including "Practical Magic 2” (following 28 years after the original film), a new "Scary Movie" (25 years) and the hotly anticipated "The Devil Wears Prada 2” (20 years).

"If they could bring back more, they would," Gross says of the studios. "If you’re going to write a check for 30 or 50 or 100 million dollars, and it worked once, you’ll give that a serious look."