If we think of movies as part of our collective memory, some of the sites along our walk toward the future, then every so often we get the pleasant opportunity to look back and wonder. For it's nice to remember where we've been and see if it's any different from where we are right now.
1967 certainly wasn't the year that 2005 will be. Of course, 1967 was the first time a film like Guess Who's Coming to Dinner could've been made. American society was playing brinkmanship with itself, trying to come to terms with 200 years of history. Maybe we're still at it, but there was urgency to the dialogue back then that I find missing in the ones today. That said, a film about interracial marriage couldn't have been marketed at a better time.
But that's the trouble with Guess Who's Coming to Dinner -- it's a film that is considered a classic for reasons that have little to do with the actual movie. Guess Who's deals with a sensitive topic and features the last great performance by Spencer Tracy before his death in the same year. What's more, Tracy caps his career with Katherine Hepburn, his perennial screen partner, playing his wife.
Still, it's worth mentioning that Guess Who's Coming wasn't the first film to deal with the tension of interracial sex -- Giant and Island in the Sun were visiting this issue a decade earlier.
Guess Who's Coming didn't introduce the topic, rather the film signaled its legitimacy. It had the gall to applaud its characters for the decisions they made.
Still, the film is not without compromises. Sidney Poitier was too perfect, too understanding and too yielding to the opinions of his future in-laws. Also, Tracy and Hepburn's gravitas on screen was more important than the roles they actually were playing.
Stanley Kramer was never more than an ineffectual director, but somehow he brought out sensitive performances from his cast. It's also a nice touch that the film is a comedy and not a strict social drama. But the best thing the film does is add an unexpected comedic depth to Tracy's character. For Guess Who's Coming isn't really about a father's concern that his daughter is going to marry a black man. He's worried that she's marrying at all.
This is an observation I feel is often neglected. While it may be subtle, this detail quietly strengthens the message of the film. It doesn't take a force as mysterious as love to show the pettiness of racial distinctions. It can be something much simpler and more amusing: elderly male pride.
In Hollywood, all fathers view their daughter's wedding as an assault on their masculinity. If the boy's too good, it means the father's no longer worthy of his daughter's attention. If the boy isn't good enough, the father asks himself where he went wrong in raising his little girl.
This is what 1967's Guess Who's Coming and 2005's Guess Who both realize. Bernie Mac is not Spencer Tracey, and Ashton Kutcher isn't Sydney Poitier. That much is trivial. What's not trivial is the shift of emphasis. Whereas the original is a human comedy, the latter is a slapstick sitcom. They're two takes on the same thorny issue.
Kutcher and Mac have an agreeable chemistry on screen and play off each other well. Most of the comedy comes from Kutcher's need to be accepted by Mac and the rites of idiocy he will endure to get there. In one scene, Mac cajoles Kutcher into telling black jokes at a family dinner. Kutcher starts off well, but soon becomes a persona non grata when his good material runs out and he becomes offensive.
Plot points are introduced to add artificial tension and reasons for the characters to bond. For example, Kutcher was a successful stockbroker but quit his job, without telling his fiancé. Mac finds out, which leads to a dispute. Of course, everything's okay by the end of the film, when Kutcher's reasons for quitting are revealed.
Still, without the historical resonance of the original, and with merely competent performances from its cast, Guess Who never rises above its pleasant mediocrity. There are no deft touches of direction and nothing happens that hasn't been dictated by formula. Everything progresses with all the surprise of a musical scale.
I'm not sure what it says about the times when a film like Guess Who is wholly unremarkable. Maybe it's a good thing we can feel this way about race politics, or is that just apathy talking? Who knows? Let's wait four decades for another remake, Guess, and then pick up where we left off.
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