8 Movies That Didn't Know Who The Bad Guy Was

4. Happy Gilmore

The fact that I'm criticizing the moralistic context of an early career Adam Sandler movie might seem like a waste of words, but bear with me, because I'm going headlong into this thing. Sandler has made his career portraying the schlubby everyman, albeit an infantile everyman with a penchant for violent outbursts. And his role in Happy Gilmore is no different.

Here, he seeks to win some easy money by winning a spot onto this movie's version of the PGA tour. He does so with the grace and class you'd expect from a man-child who repeatedly fails to make the hockey team because he's too wild and violent for the sport. While running rampant through the tour, he encounters his supposed nemesis, Shooter McGavin.

Shooter is an arrogant, condescending golf veteran who feels slightly threatened by Happy, especially his popularity amongst the white trashiest demographic that he's begun attracting to the sport. Shooter fears that Happy's outlaw style will ultimately ruin the sport (not to mention his chances at securing the gold jacket he's failed to win thus far).

Because Happy Gllmore is such a jovial and free-spirited character who loves his grandmother, we're initially more drawn to him than to the stereotypically uptight, traditional Shooter. But Happy is also grating, petulant, sadistic (the guy punches Bob Barker, for Christ's sake!), and has literally zero respect for the sport he's now engaging in.

Shooter, by contrast, is just a little jerky and self-centered. He just wants Happy out of his sport. That guy, to me, seems a more likely protagonist.