A domineering blowhard of a father heads for his inevitable comeuppance in this British comedy of drunkards and their daughters, featuring an unforgettably overheated performance by Charles Laughton that set the bar for future put-upon cinematic patriarchs. Ruling over his boot shop and his daughters' “general uppishness” with an imperially dismissive collection of rants and foot-stomps, the widower Hobson seems shocked when the issue of marrying off his brood comes up, and more so when his oldest daughter Maggie runs off with an illiterate bootmaker. Maggie's got plans to form her own shop and emancipate not only herself but her new husband, leaving poor father to deal with his other daughters and his increasing drunken hallucinations. With an empowered female lead and a sharp dissection of class prejudice, the film has more on its mind than merely charting the follies of the English father, but with Laughton in such fine form, that could really be enough.