The dad from the Father of the Bride films has always topped the list of the most protective fathers in cinema. The newest version of the film that just debuted on HBO Max stars Golden Globe nominee Andy Garcia as Billy Herrera, a successful Miami-based architect who was exiled to the United States years ago from Cuba and built his entire life and family with his wife Ingrid (Grammy-winning Gloria Estefan).

The film commences with Ingrid announcing to Billy her final intention to divorce him, and they agree to break this news to their daughters, Sofia, a New-York City-based lawyer (Irma Vep’s Adria Arjona), and college drop-out Cora (Isabela Merced from Dora and the Lost City of Gold). Their plan fails when Sofia comes home to announce that she’s going to marry her colleague from Mexico and move there to start a pro bono job. This idea drives Billy insane as he’s obviously not ready to approve of this marriage nor to admit that his daughter is an adult who is just about to start her own family.

Billy’s emotional journey makes this comedy a perfect fit for Father’s Day, a holiday that has been honoring fatherhood and paternal bonds since the Middle Ages.

Father of the Bride, produced by Plan B and directed by Gary “Gaz” Alazraki, is a reboot of the 1991 comedy of the same name directed by Charles Shyer and co-written by him with his then-wife, Nancy Meyers. George Banks, played by Steve Martin, instantaneously comes to mind as one of the most uber-protective screen dads.

That film tells the story of what George goes through after his 22-year-old daughter (Kimberly Williams) returns home from Europe and announces she’s engaged to a man she met just three months ago – George instantly dislikes him despite his good financial status and likable demeanor. The story of parental disapproval and subsequent wedding planning became one of the most successful comedies and had a sequel directed by Charles Shyer in 1995 and a short sequel/reunion directed by Nancy Meyers in 2020.

All the versions of the film are based on the 1949 novel of the same name by Edward Streeter which was first adapted for the screen by the scriptwriting duo of Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett and directed by Liza Minnelli’s father, Vincente Minnelli. The 1950’s box office hit Father of the Bride starred Spencer Tracy as Stanley T. Banks and 18-year-old Elizabeth Taylor.

Besides being one of the first adult roles of the future Golden Globe winner, Father of the Bride had an unusual publicity campaign: MGM arranged the wedding ceremony for Taylor who tied the knot with her first husband Conrad “Nicky” Hilton a month before the film was released. The highly-publicized marriage took place at Good Shepherd Catholic Church in Beverly Hills, just a few blocks from All Saints Episcopal Church where Taylor’s onscreen vows were filmed, and she wore the wedding gown created by legendary Helen Rose for the film.

And of course, Tracy’s monologue in the film about his daughter’s wedding is iconic: “I always used to think that marriages were a simple affair. Boy meets girl. Fall in love. They get married. Have babies. Eventually, the babies grow up and meet other babies, they fall in love. Get married. Have babies. And so on and on and on. Looked at that way, it’s not only simple, it’s downright monotonous. But I was wrong. I figured without the wedding.”

Interestingly, the last work by Tracy before he passed away in 1967 was the role of another disapproving father in Stanley Kramer’s Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? Tracy plays Matt Drayton, a successful newspaper editor happily married to an art gallery owner played by Tracy’s wife, Katharine Hepburn. When their 23-year-old daughter Joanna (played by Hepburn’s niece Katharine Houghton) returns from her Hawaiian vacation to her parents’ home in San Francisco with a 37-year-old widower, Dr. John Prentice, played by Sidney Poitier, it takes quite a heavy toll on her parents to accept their engagement.

This 1967 drama by the Golden Globe-winning director was one of the very few films of the time positively depicting an interracial marriage that historically has been considered illegal in many states of the United States. The film received great critical acclaim and garnered Tracy, Hepburn, and Houghton their Golden Globe nominations.

True story-based drama Steel Magnolias directed by Herbert Ross, which garnered Julia Roberts her very first Golden Globe in 1990, is a perfect example of a girl’s father (played by Tom Skerritt) supporting every decision of his daughter’s, even the very dramatic ones.

The recent Autumn de Wilde adaptation of 1815’s Emma. by Jane Austen portrays another type of father: Mr. Woodhouse played by Bill Nighy adores his younger daughter Emma (Anya Taylor-Joy). She is unwilling to get married as she’s confident that no other man would be ever able to make him feel as “truly beloved and important, so always first and always right” as her dad.

The list of the most notorious girls’ dads would be incomplete without Jack Byrnes, played by Robert De Niro in Jay Roach’s comedy Meet the Parents, released in 2000. The ex-CIA agent does a brilliant job of sabotaging the wedding of his daughter Pam (Teri Polo) in the most spectacular way, including subjecting his future son-in-law Greg Focker (Ben Stiller) to a lie detector test. De Niro’s performance makes us realize that overprotective fathers can be not only funny or sweet but also scary. The performance garnered him a nomination for a Golden Globe in 2001.

When it comes to father-daughter relations, one more onscreen father springs to mind. In 1990, Disney’s animated film, The Little Mermaid, loosely based on the 1837 Danish fairytale of the same name by Hans Christian Andersen, was nominated for a Golden Globe as Best Picture – Musical /Comedy. On her journey to a happy marriage with Prince Eric, Ariel must face the challenge of her father’s harsh disapproval. The King of the Sea, Triton, is reluctant to trust the barbaric fish-eaters, and when his beloved daughter becomes lovesick for a human, he enforces a zero-tolerance policy in his underwater kingdom.

As we all know, this story also has a happy ending, and it will be interesting to see what approach will be taken in the coming live-action adaptation of this classic film to be directed by Rob Marshall, starring Javier Bardem as Triton and Halle Bailey as Ariel.