Rating:

My preference in movies watched for entertainment runs to things like Die Hard, Army of Darkness, Airplane!, and Star Wars. I appreciate great dramas, but most of them require that I get in the proper mindset—that I prepare myself—and that just doesn’t happen very often. Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, on the other hand, is a movie I could watch every single day.

The movie takes place on the day Joey Drayton (Katharine Houghton) brings home John Prentiss (Sidney Poitier), the man she intends to marry. The meat of the film centers around the reaction of her parents (Tracy and Hepburn, who appeared together in every movie released over a stretch of some twenty years) to this situation. John is handsome, impeccably mannered and polite, and a doctor famous in his field—not to put too fine a point on it, he’s a helluva catch for Joey. But since he’s black and it’s 1967, Mr. and Mrs. Drayton are still shocked, no matter how forward-thinking and liberal minded they’ve professed to be in the past.

The script is a masterfully realistic exploration of personal feelings on race—not just the feelings of Joey’s parents, but John’s family too—as well as whether a person’s stated beliefs match up with their actions and their true feelings. It’s a serious picture on a serious subject, but its greatest asset is that it never takes itself too seriously. Instead of preaching or being heavy handed, it’s simple and honest and often very funny, switching effortlessly between dramatic moments and comedic ones. Kinda like life.

And oh yeah, how’s ’bout that cast? Three of the four leads (Tracy, Poitier, Hepburn) are Academy Award winners. That’s a lot of oomph in one picture. They’re all excellent, but Spencer Tracy in particular stands out as some kind of champion. This movie was his last, and it’s perhaps the best performance he ever gave. If his stirring final speech doesn’t bring a tear to your eye and a lump to your throat, then you are broken inside and I hate you.

Oh! Also appearing is Mrs. Jefferson as Tilly, a set in her ways maid who definitely does not approve of black folks movin’ on up, be they doctors, dry cleaners or otherwise.

Here’s the biggest thing I wonder about with this movie. The picture opens with John and Joey on the way to her parents’ house. As they talk to each other, three things become evident: these two are very much in love, the Draytons have never met John, and he worries that there may be a problem when they do. What that problem might be isn’t explicitly stated at this point in the flick, and I wonder if a modern audience might not immediately recognize it.

I imagine most viewers probably would recognize it, but I hope they don’t. During a confrontation with his father, John says “You see yourself as a colored man; I see myself as a man.” I’d hate to think that in the forty years since Sidney Poitier delivered those lines we’ve moved so little as a society that such meaningless distinctions as race are still the first things that spring to mind. Fortunately, there exist movies like this one to help us notice those issues within ourselves and, hopefully, move beyond them.

If You Hated This, You Will Also Totally Hate:

• 2001: A Space Odyssey
• Raiders of the Lost Ark
• It’s a Wonderful Life
• Yankee Doodle Dandy
• Easy Rider