Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967)

As a movie fan, I have oftentimes purchased DVDs based simply on the knowledge it is an older, well-known movie, and considered something of a classic.  For the most part, this has worked out well for me as few of these purchases have left me feeling burned.  That said, there are a couple exceptions, movies that are ultimately disappointing for me as a viewer.

One such film is 1967's Guess Who's Coming to Dinner.

There's no reason for Guess Who's Coming to Dinner to be disappointing on the surface.  There's a well-known cast of quality actors, with leads Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn having another of their legendary team-ups.  Director Stanley Kramer had done quality work during his career behind the camera with movies like The Defiant Ones and Inherit the Wind.  And it features the usual good, solid acting work of Sidney Poitier, one of those actors I always find compelling and charismatic.  Poitier could give Steve McQueen a run for his money as Coolest Man In The Room.  The movie also tackles an important issue of interracial love.

Actually, that last part is what's more or less "wrong" with the movie.  It just plain isn't subtle.  Maybe Kramer and the people he worked with didn't believe a more subtle film could be made on this topic in 1967.  I don't buy that, as To Kill a Mockingbird is much better at examining racial issues, though missing some of the subtlety the book it is based on has.  Granted, Mockingbird is dealing with an actual life-or-death situation for poor Tom Robinson, but that movie dealt the goods better, and earlier by five years, than Guess Who's manages.  The theme of this movie could be dispensed with a sledgehammer.

To review, we are introduced in the opening credits to Poitier's Dr. John Prentice and his fiance Joey Drayton, as played by Katharine Houghton.  They're in an airport, acting very lovey-dovey, and after collecting their luggage and calling a cab, the driver is shocked, shocked to see a black man and a white woman kissing in the back of his cab.  The driver (and the audience) sees them through his rearview mirror, and his eyebrows go up to show how shocked, outright shocked he is.  This may have been all the producers could get away with in 1967.  I wasn't there, so I don't know.  I do know, as a modern viewer, it seems tame to me.

That said, once the cab pulls away from the curb, this is the last time Poitier will act even a little lovestruck.  He and Houghton are on their way to meet her parents (Tracy and Hepburn) to explain that the two are in love and are going to get married.  And while Joey continues to gush nonstop over Dr. John, Dr. John mostly just acts as her companion.  If not for the opening sequence, you'd never know he's in love at all.  I don't think he so much as holds her hand.

The plot goes from there as Hepburn accepts the couple almost immediately, while Tracy, a leftwing newspaper editor, has to grapple with his feelings on the subject of his daughter marrying a black man.  He's not certain.  Basically, though, the deck is stacked against him.  Poitier's John Prentice is a doctor, fairly well-off, does oodles of charity work overseas (this being how he met Joey in the first place), he offers to step aside if Tracy and Hepburn don't approve, and he's freakin' Sidney Poitier, the aforementioned Coolest Man In The Room.  The only possible objection to the man, aside from a noticeable age difference, is he's black.

See what I said about lack of subtlety?

So, Tracy thinks over the whole situation, evaluates his own feelings on race and a black man, who's perfect, marrying his daughter, consults his wife, the family priest, and John's parents (John's dad is also against the marriage, as mothers are just SO understanding in this movie), and comes to a decision.  He then gives a speech at the end of the movie, and here was where, for just a moment, I thought the movie might dip into some complexity.  Tracy begins by saying how he didn't like how everybody spent the whole day telling him how he should feel.

This would be a fantastic way to turn the movie on its ear.  It wasn't as simple as black-and-white marriage that was bothering ol' Spencer Tracy!  It was how everyone was telling him how he should feel, and he resents that, because he's a good dad and he's been worried about society and what might happen to his little girl and John is a great guy and all, but really, father's worry and stuff like that.

Instead, he launches into a speech on how love is all that matters and he invites everyone to have a nice dinner, with his blessing on the union, and his hopes John's father will come around.  Movie ends with a sappy song over the closing credits.

After seeing this, I was somehow less surprised a more recent remake was some sort of slapstick comedy, races reversed, with the late Bernie Mac in the Tracy roll and Ashton Kutcher in the Poitier roll.  As much as I felt the original didn't age well or show anything like a complex idea, it still had the Coolest Guy In The Room, and not a onetime host of Punk'd.