Millennial Movie Nostalgia Is Officially Out of Control

“Did you watch Happy Gilmore 2 yet?” That question was posed to me via text by friends multiple times over the weekend. If you were to ask anyone else between the ages of 29 and 44, there’s a good chance they’d tell you they received (or sent) similar messages.

Most of us knew exactly what we were getting with a Happy Gilmore sequel: shameless nostalgia bait that has no reason to exist but is still kinda fun. As I wrote earlier this month, “I want a tight 90 minutes of pratfalls, people getting hit in the nuts with golf balls, celebrity cameos, and the perfect blend of familiar faces and new talents. I want Adam Sandler on the green in Timberlands. I want a plot that’s just different enough from the original to not be plagiarism.” But Happy Gilmore 2 is far from the only recent film designed to appeal to those of us who came of age in the ’90s or early ’00s and are now old enough to have the disposable income to regularly shell out $20 on movie tickets.

There has been a rash of sequels and reboots of Millennial favorites lately: Freddie Prinze Jr. and Jennifer Love Hewitt both returned to their popular ’90s horror franchise in the new I Know What You Did Last Summer, which hit theaters a little over a week ago. Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan will swap bodies once again in Freakier Friday, in theaters Aug. 8. Over the weekend, it was announced that everyone’s favorite basketball-playing dog will suit up once again in 2026’s Air Bud Returns. We just got our first look at Anne Hathaway filming The Devil Wears Prada 2. Not to be outdone, a sequel to 2002’s Bend It Like Beckham was announced two days ago (though director Gurinder Chadha noted that the original cast members “are aware that a sequel is being developed, but they obviously want to see a script before they commit”). Then there’s This Is Spinal Tap, which may have been released a little too early to be considered a Millennial classic — it came out in 1984 — but it aired on cable constantly in the ’90s; it’s also getting a second installment.

That jam-packed list doesn’t even include all the other potential sequels that aren’t officially confirmed yet. Piper Perabo recently teased that, nearly 25 years after it originally hit theaters, “there have been some discussions” about a Coyote Ugly 2. And over the weekend, Dermot Mulroney revealed that “there is talk of a sequel” to his 1997 rom-com My Best Friend’s Wedding.

It’s enough already.

I’m all for revisiting beloved characters and reliving my youth, but the fatal flaw here is that, narratively speaking, none of these movies need to be made. Their originals were all complete stories, with no loose ends to tie up. In fact, some of them have plots that would make it extremely difficult to return to. (What the hell would a My Best Friend’s Wedding sequel look like? Dermot Mulroney and Julia Roberts’s characters both have kids in their 20s now, and they’re best friends, one of whom is also harboring an unrequited crush?) As someone who sits smack dab in the middle of the Millennial age range, I’ll happily admit that it’s fun to be catered to, but it’s hard to see the endless churn of reboots and sequels as anything more than blatant cash grabs.

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I understand the urge to indulge our curiosity and go see these movies to find out exactly what sort of convoluted excuse to revisit a decades-old story they came up with this time. We already know going in that there’s no way these movies will hold a candle to the originals, and they’re very likely to be duds that taint the legacies of their source material. We go see or stream them anyway to gawk at the train wrecks and see how well the teen heartthrobs of our youth have aged.

But ultimately, that only encourages studios to keep whipping up more of them. Who cares how bad they are if they get asses in seats, right? It discourages Hollywood studios from taking a chance on more unique ideas, instead allowing them to rest on their laurels and keep tapping the same well over and over again. Is it worth it to sacrifice originality for mediocre rehashes of old favorites?

To quote the one true Happy Gilmore, “The price is wrong, bitch.”

Meet your guide

Bonnie Stiernberg

Bonnie Stiernberg is InsideHook’s Managing Editor. She was Music Editor at Paste Magazine for seven years, and she has written about music and pop culture for Rolling Stone, Glamour, Billboard, Vice and more.