Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967)

Good concept, poorly executed.

Beautiful, moving film.

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

"Guess Who's Coming" opens with a shot of a United airplane in flight. Because of the angle of the wings, the sun reflects bright white off one and dark off the other. This uniting of black and white portends the plot where 23-year-old Joanna (Joey) Drayton (Katherine Houghton) flies from Hawaii to San Francisco to surprise her mom Christina Drayton (Katharine Hepburn) and dad Matt Drayton (Spencer Tracy) with her new beau 37-year-old Dr. John Prentice (Sidney Poitier). Since her parents have been liberal about race relations all along, she expects, "There's no problem."Desmond Morris (best known for his book *The Naked Ape*) observes human interactions in *Manwatching* (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1974, 169): "If we see something that excites us, whether with pleasure or fear, our pupils expand. If we see something mildly distasteful, they contract." On the following page he relates about, "when liberally minded people were shown photographs of black males kissing white females. Although all the subjects spoke approvingly of racial equality, their pupils split them neatly into two groups--the liberals 'at heart' whose pupils matched their stated beliefs, and the 'merely persuaded' liberals, or perhaps pseudo-liberals, who, despite their praise for racial integration, revealed pinprick pupils when confronted with the black-kissing-white display."The suspense of the film lies in trying to guess which categories the parents will settle into.The colored maid and the suitor's black father both hold forth that the Negro doctor is exceeding his station in life. The white dad admits to being "flabbergasted." Everyone cautions the starry-eyed couple that it might not end well. This is an eminent example of (Prov. 30:21-22) "the earth is disquieted, and it cannot bear: for a servant when he reigneth."This is supposed to be a rare Hollywood message movie. But there are messages and there are messages. One message I read by subtracting 7 years from the lives of the couple, to get a 16-year-old girl and a 30-year-old guy, the exact same age difference between a once 30-year-old Roy Moore now in the news and the 16-year-olds that he was purportedly interested in at that age. His marriage to one of them did turn out just fine. Can it be we Yankees are overly judgmental on the southerners who are more accepting of age difference, just as the South was more judgmental about race? The second message is what if your family is not so liberal? One should perhaps not date someone from a class he or she could never marry into; if they fall in love, what then? Here the couple fell in love 20 minutes after meeting. That would seem to rationalize against fraternization.Typically, in a Hollywood film, love conquers all. We certainly have a cast to give us hope to pull it off. Sidney Poitier is the only Negro actor at the time a White audience could abide in a leading role. The actresses were just the ones to tug at the heart strings. Notwithstanding the great acting here, Poitier and Houghton just didn't have any chemistry together. For supposedly being in love, they simply didn't look at each other often enough. Furthermore, Portier's speech inflections were nowhere near those of his character's parents making it hard to believe he was their son. The movie was redeemed in part by Billy Hill's song, "The Glory of Love," played in various forms throughout."Guess Who is Coming to Dinner" was directed by Stanley Kramer, with Ray Gosnell the assistant director. The Gosnell clan (of whom I am one) originally hailed from Virginia; perhaps that accounts for all the southern style hospitality shown in the film. It was released 50 years before I just now saw it, back in December, 1967. It just got accepted into a national archive to preserve culturally significant films. Its "message" has to do with things perhaps changing in fifty or a hundred years. I wouldn't hold my breath. It probably has application to other "special difficulties" as well.It followed the template of a play, more or less, with limited fixed settings and heavy dialog. I wasn't overly impressed by it.

Even after 50 years, there are still many takeaways from Guess Who's Coming to Dinner that stand out. The daughter of a wealthy white family bringing home her African-American fiancée is certainly more widely accepted today than it was in the 60s, but the cultural opinions on the subject aren't vastly different between 1967 San Francisco and the some parts of the South today. The reactions of her family are very telling, they are shocked, but the only person truly offended is Tillie, their African-American maid. Her prejudices are more intense towards her own race, then the views of any of the white characters. Everyone's real desire is to maintain the status quo, and it takes a lot to get them to move past that and embrace a relationship that upends that.The entire cast excels, particularly Spencer Tracy as the father trying to do what's best for his daughter and Katharine Hepburn as the supportive mother. Beah Richards also is very strong as Mrs. Prentice, another mother seeing the love between them are realizing it is stronger than any of the difficulties they will assuredly face.

" . . . will your dead weight be off our backs!" Sidney Poitier pointedly challenges the Trumpster Cohort, with their Deplorably Racist "Birther" Lies which allowed Red Commie KGB Chief Vlad "The Mad Russian" Putin to Rig the 2016 Election in about 3,000 backwater U.S. Counties still stuck in the Stone Age emotionally. GUESS WHO'S COMING TO DINNER closely parallels Barack Obama's Hawaiian Origins between a White Mom and a Black Daddy, with this exact combination of Romantic Setting and Breeding sure to produce a U.S. President, DINNER confidently (and accurately) predicts in so many words about 20 minutes into this movie. With one foot in the grave (he died before DINNER could be served to the American Public), Spencer Tracy forecasts that there will STILL be 100 million American Neanderthals Ruling the Roost in Our Homeland 50 years following his after DINNER speech. Obviously, Poitier is far too optimistic in his quote made at the top here. The Racist Confederate Traitor Descendants and their Fellow Traveler Ilk MUST either self-deport or be removed ASAP North to Canada for a Seven-Generation Cooling Off Period, AFTER surrendering ALL of their ill-gotten weapons, real estate, and other assets, the pool of which will be divvied up for Reparations and to settle the National Debt, for which they're 99% responsible.

This movie tells a heavy topic in a very relax and easy-going way. In that ages, race is the biggest issue to stop anything it wants. Just like this movie. There is no doubt that those two young people love each other. Just like at the ending of this movie, Mrs.Prentice says that you can tell how deep they gets in love with each other from those eye contact. Will you still love your husband/wife no matter times past. This young couple does have little problems. They decide to engaged with out notice their family. But that is how love does. If you falling into love, you will do the same thing , no matter how others will look at you. Love is a safe shelter for you to against others.