= 4 stars

Starring Sidney Poitier, Katharine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy
Directed by Stanley Kramer

Amazon Link

Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner represents a move from one age of film to another: classic acting to controversial subject matter near the end of the sixties. Passing the baton are high-quality, classic film veterans Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy.

Matt (Spencer Tracy) and Christina Drayton (Katharine Hepburn) are successful parents in San Francisco, when their daughter Joey (Katharine Houghton) returns from a trip abroad with her new fiance John Prentice (Sidney Poiter), a successful doctor, but also African American. The couple wants to get married as soon as possible before moving abroad, leaving only a short amount of time for the Draytons to give their approval for the marriage and get beyond their racial hangups.

When this film was made, an interracial relationship was controversial stuff, as America was tearing itself apart with the civil rights movement - and in certain states, such marriages were still illegal. Because of the current events surrounding it, the film’s ending is pretty much a given, but there’s much entertainment that occurs before. Film greats Hepburn and Tracy are paired together for one more go, both actors creating mesmerizing entertainment out of mundane situations such as shopping for ice cream.

Also excellent is Sidney Poitier who has the thankless task of playing the “other” who must be perfect in every way. Poitier has a steely presence, and manages to juggle both sets of parents and embody an upstanding man any sane person would feel honored to have their daughter wed.

I wasn’t too fond of daughter Joey, who is rather disturbingly oblivious to the racial implications of her romance. Perhaps she believes that the best way to counter racism is to pretend it doesn’t exist; a stance I disagree with.

The ultimate reason why racism is morally wrong is because it discounts the person. When someone looks at a minority and views them only through their racial makeup, it implies that their individual personality is not worth comprehending. However, I do think there is a human tendency to group individuals out of convenience, which conflicts with our personal desire to always be considered as individuals. It takes some time for the parents to realize that John is worth understanding, because they’re caught up in societal stereotypes. They have to “unlearn” racism.

While the Draytons are initially wrong-headed, I can also empathize, because during the time period when the film was being made and how the race conflict was occurring, it would be controversial even if the individuals recognized racism as irrational. The film is ultimately about the characters’ thought process as they shift from thinking like everyone else to thinking for themselves.

Overall, Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner is a type of film rarely made today. I found it entertaining, realistic, and respectful of the issues raised. The characters are well-defined and there’s a social message beneath the entertainment. I think it’s worth checking out as a benchmark of where we’ve been, where we are now, and where we still have to go.

IMDB: Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner
Wikipedia: Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner
Rotten Tomatoes: Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner 74%

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