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I remember seeing Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? when I was a kid and being very impressed by what I was told was a groundbreaking film about race relations. But as the years have passed, the strength of this film is not as solid as I once thought.
This movie brings up a lot of interesting questions but instead of thoughtfully exploring these questions, the movie looks for quick fixes and easy answers that you would normally find in 22 minutes of situation comedy.
For instance, Matt and Christina Drayton (Tracy and Hepburn)are forced to come to immediate conclusions about their daughter marrying a black man because the couple are planning to leave the country. I wonder if their feelings would have been the same without the time constraint. I think screenwriter William Rose also made the story easy by making Sidney Poitier's character a wealthy, widowed doctor with a million degrees doing groundbreaking research. I wondered what this movie would have been like if Katharine Houghton had brought home a drug dealing pimp instead of an important doctor.
But the film is still worth seeing if for no other reason to watch the screen's most divine screen team, in their final film together. Tracy commands the screen whenever he is on it, but Hepburn has her moments too. My favorite Hepburn moment is when her assistant from the gallery, played by Virginia Christine ("Mrs. Olsen" from the Folgers commercials)makes veiled racial remarks about John and Joey and Christina calmly and very politely fires her. It's classic Hepburn and that scene is worth the price of admission alone. Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?is definitely showing its age, but the still stylish and intelligent presence of Tracy and Hepburn still makes it worth watching.
I remember seeing Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? when I was a kid and being very impressed by what I was told was a groundbreaking film about race relations. But as the years have passed, the strength of this film is not as solid as I once thought.
This movie brings up a lot of interesting questions but instead of thoughtfully exploring these questions, the movie looks for quick fixes and easy answers that you would normally find in 22 minutes of situation comedy.
For instance, Matt and Christina Drayton (Tracy and Hepburn)are forced to come to immediate conclusions about their daughter marrying a black man because the couple are planning to leave the country. I wonder if their feelings would have been the same without the time constraint. I think screenwriter William Rose also made the story easy by making Sidney Poitier's character a wealthy, widowed doctor with a million degrees doing groundbreaking research. I wondered what this movie would have been like if Katharine Houghton had brought home a drug dealing pimp instead of an important doctor.
But the film is still worth seeing if for no other reason to watch the screen's most divine screen team, in their final film together. Tracy commands the screen whenever he is on it, but Hepburn has her moments too. My favorite Hepburn moment is when her assistant from the gallery, played by Virginia Christine ("Mrs. Olsen" from the Folgers commercials)makes veiled racial remarks about John and Joey and Christina calmly and very politely fires her. It's classic Hepburn and that scene is worth the price of admission alone. Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?is definitely showing its age, but the still stylish and intelligent presence of Tracy and Hepburn still makes it worth watching.