Waste of time

That was an excellent one.

Admirable film.

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

How do they do it? Here is the list of ingredients - A) a Magical Black Superman who is loaded with super powers - handsome, a doctor, a Nobel Prize nominee (!!!), so noble that he refused sex before marriage, and he wouldn't even marry the girl without her parents' consent (This writer is completely heterosexual, but if I met a guy like that, I'd marry that dude myself). B)The girl's parents were played by American Cinema's First Couple, Film Integrity Personified, whose very presence led credence to the premise of the film. C) The bulk of the angry dissent is assigned to the poor, working class, and easily dismissible "colored" father, who has been left to the past by his Magical Black Son. In a scene completely devoid of reality, the Son castigates his father in brilliant cinematic fashion (an act which would have gotten him immediately popped in the mouth in any real Black family of that era, even at that age. Kramer,obviously, never spent a moment in a Black home in his life. That level of disrespect for parents was unheard of in Black families at that time. If the quiet, docile mother had walked in during that dramatic tirade, she would have slapped her Son, herself - "Boy, have you lost your mind???....". ) D) The rest of the angry dissent was saved for Kramer's most tone deaf moment in the film, when the White family's self-sacrificing "good colored girl" maid, in full throttle, Hattie McDaniel-inspired form, throws herself in front of her virtuous White charge, and savagely attacks the Magical Black Man for having the audacity to forget his place. Kramer really played to the heart of his target audience with this scene, allowing them to vent, through privileged laughter, at a stereotype that they had lived with so comfortably for generations. Kramer, with this scene, was blissfully dismissive of the sensitivities of the Civil Rights era Black audiences who helped to make this movie a hit. This scene was played for laughs and it is often fondly recalled by fans of the film. Rest assured, however, the gales of laughter this scene caused in Manhattan's Upper East Side was matched, pound for pound, with groans of anger (and worse) in Harlem. Yes, GUESS WHO'S COMING TO DINNER was made for easy digestion by a generation of infants with weak and sensitive stomachs. The question of course now is, 51 years later, has that generation truly grown up?

This film explores the issue of interracial marriage.Sidney P's character is a successful man, John Prentice. He is a doctor. Maybe this is a bit of a problem, in that one might have hoped for an exploration of class issues, as well as race issues. Both Poitier and Hepburn are lovely and middle class (though, to be fair Poitier's dad is a blue-collar gut i think). Having said that, both issues are huge and it might have been asking a bit much to expect the film to address both. The class thing was air-brushed i felt.But it does address gender issues I think. Both the black father and the white father are very conservative and old-fashioned. They are opposed to the marriage, as are the mothers - initially. However the mums get their heads together. The mums are more liberal-permissive and their job is to talk their respective husbands into being groovy. But Spencer Tracey (Hepburn's dad) and Roy Glenn (Prentice Snr) are opposed to the marriage. So the film does play up to gender stereotypes - the dads are the warriors and the mums are the peacemakers. But stereotypes are not wrong just because they are stereotypes...The dads are entrenched and the mums are trying to sort it out. Which view will prevail? Will it all end in lots of tears and tragedy, or can the mums pull the iron out of the fire?Of course, as well as the mums trying to sort it out, so are the love- struck couple. Poitier is trying to convince his dad to be a bit more open minded, and Hepburn is doing likewise with Tracey.Of course Poitier and Hepburn are brilliant, but I never really picked up a big sexual attraction here, not a lot of chemistry. Indeed, they are rational, pretty cool. A decent exploration of race issues, but a little bit folksy for my taste - could have done with more edge.

I'm going to speak frankly.As a person who is by no means a leftist or a liberal, I found this film to be very moving. Most people who review the film I assume are liberals, so I guess I offer a different perspective. For me, this is a sad film. It is sad because the vision of America that the liberals Tracy and Hepburn's characters have here just did not pan out. The moment when Poitier's character says "you see yourself as a colored man, but I see myself as a man" shows just what sort of society these people imagined we would have, and it's tragic that history did not turn out that way. From the vantage point of 2017, race relations are worse than ever before. With SJWs, Affirmative Action, crime in the inner cities, anti-white racism, immigration problems etc, the vision that race would no longer matter just simply did not pan out. As whites today this film can only make us sad. It's tragic. I almost wish things did turn out that way, that race in America could have become a nonfactor and that none of the crazy problems we face today exist, but they do. And so viewing this film in retrospect, it seems so innocent and naive in a tragic way. Beautifully filmed with a San Francisco location and a lovely soundtrack, this is by all means a tremendous film, and I probably like it a little more than snotty liberals who probably can find this or that reason to view this film which to me seems progressive as "reactionary."

At the film's end, the counterculture and the societal mind-set turn is the most prominent. It's somewhat tense, packed (with different individuals and "groups" of people) and has the viewer watching with batted breath to see how this will all be handled, and if the couple we've come to love, Dr. Prentice and Joanna, will find acceptance and if that acceptance remains an important factor prior to marriage. The common themes of counterculture and prevalent throughout. The elements of race, how Joanna openly talks about sex with her mother (we see her mother go red in the face, yet Joanna behind her is totally unfazed. A great use of framing here). Also, there's an okay amount of swearing, conflicts between the older and younger generations (where the younger generation isn't immediately reprimand as they would have in earlier films).