Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967)

That was an excellent one.

Admirable film.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

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

This 1967 drama has some fans over the years. However it was a phoney attempt at racial recnciliation. The young woman was obviously too young and immature to be love interest of Dr Prentiss, a black physician. She acted like a air-headed the entire movie, and hardly was there chemistry between her and the male lead. The attempt at playfulness was like father-daughter. Now the mother, Katherine Hepburn who was expectedly shocked when her daughter brought me a black man (this is 1967). But all of that shock lasted but 5 minutes. After that the hollywood liberal became evident. Spencer Tracy was barely a tad more hesitant before giving in. Another thing wrong - this is the fault of infantile writers: the black man in question had to be Yale professor of medicine, and won honors internationally for his work in the WHO. A black man had to have these credentials to be palatable to white society ? What if he was only a sales executive ? No, he wouldnt have been good enough. The most interesting relationship was the dynamic between the black guest and the black maid. And what was the animosity between him and his father who also came to dinner ?This film was lauded for its sensitive subject in that era, but did not exhibit the intelligence it deserves.

I went to see it for the first time with my grandmother when I was 17. I loved it but it felt strange to me because my grandmother after 22 years of widowhood, had remarried to an African American man. He had become a blessing in my grandmother's life and in ours. How could Spencer Tracy of all people be against the union? After the movie we went to dinner and my grandmother answered all my questions with a single answer that's been with me always and that sometimes explains absurdities like Charlottesville 2017 - "Society, humanity doesn't evolve all at the same time" Of course Grandma', you were right. Watching Guess Who's Coming To Dinner in 2017 was an experience. Is not that Spencer Tracy is against their union, - Tracy was only worried to what his daughter was going to face 1967 - He was thinking like a father and not like a thinking, evolved liberal. On the other hand, Roy Glenn, Sidney Poitier's father objects to his son marrying a white girl. Sidney Poitier stops him by saying "Dad, you see yourself as a colored man, I see myself as a man" Was it as didactic as it sounds in 1967? Who cares? The message was delivered - I also was so moved to see Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy together for the last time and they knew it was for the last time. Sidney Poitier is superb as the messenger who points at the absurdity of racism. Guess Who's Coming To Dinner is a delicious document of its day.

With three huge hits in 1967, Sidney Poitier claimed his reign as the biggest star in Hollywood, over Redford, over Newman, over McQueen. No actor took on such films with social consequence and won both scorn and admiration for it. Controversy loomed because white audiences loved him, and for some black moviegoers considered him an "Uncle Tom". But if only a handful of bigoted white people came out of seeing a Sidney Poitier movie seeing an actor and a man rather than a black actor or a black man, then he made just as much headway in the civil rights movement as the marches did.Coming out just as the supreme court legalized interracial marriage, thus tackles the subject head on. Perhaps its too polite, too upper middle class, too clean cut, but there it is, an attempt to tackle a topical subject, and it opened a conversation where the answers are completely all over the map today.The beautiful Katherine Houghton comes home with a surprise for her "nice" parents, Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn, decent people but stunned by the news. Actually, Hepburn is more open to the idea, as earthy and understanding as husband Tracy is old school. When Poitiers's parents arrive, the discussion comes to a head, and like Hepburn, Poitiers's soft spoken mother (Beah Richards) is more open to the idea than Poitiers's frightened father (Roy Glenn) who is old fashioned elegance and proud, but locked in old ideals.Isabel Sanford, as Tracy and Hepburn's housekeeper, represents the outsiders point of view from the black angle, while Virginia Christine is the uppity white person's point of view, deliciously told off by Hepburn. Grwsr moments in the script often make thus feel too "plotted" in every deal, with few awkward moments to represent the real life. But certain moments, such each of the major character's individual speeches (highlighted by Richards and Tracy's climactic viewpoints) are each brilliant in their own way. It's emotional to watch Hepburn and Tracy working together for the very last time, so being manipulated by the sentimentality can take over the soul while watching it. Still, as directed by the legendary Stanley Kramer, it comes out to be an important historical document on race relations, although in some aspects, it seems quite dated.

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.