Trouble in Store

First of the Norman Wisdom comedies that provided Rank with a once-a-year commercial lifeline well into the 1960s, and established Wisdom as the natural heir to George Formby. His persona - shy, ever eager, haplessly uncoordinated, inevitably both misunderstood and prone to embarrassing accidents - not only transcended the context of a given film, but usually ended up demolishing it as well, as here where his window-dressing ambitions bring chaos to a department store run by eternal stooge Jerry Desmonde and plagued by shoplifters of Margaret Rutherford's class.