Stanley Kramer directs Sidney Poitier, Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn in this drama about mixed race couple trying to gain parental approval for their whirlwind romance in sixties America. 

Another difficult film to review. It is trying to be forward thinking yet was made in a period of such social flux so that it probably felt dated as soon as the film stock was being developed. It is a film where the young couple is so perfect, the hesitant parents so decent, that the drama is tensionless. It is film where the parents’ main objection is the world’s negative reaction to the couple’s difference rather than any hatred to the ‘other’ in itself. It is film where after the final bow tieing ‘that solves everything’ big speech, the black maid is told to serve dinner. Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner probably has very little to say for today’s audience, even about attitudes in 1967. In reality it is an idealised view of pragmatic liberalism at the time, rather than race relations of any period. Sensitive to danger yet inoffensive in itself so as to be a toothless fantasy. Is it a waste of time? No. You get some lovely star performances and support turns. Poitier handles all the awkwardness, scripted and unscripted, with a classy elan. And bride to be / apple of their eye Katharine Houghton is cute enough to be worth the fuss. Even when she coquettishly says ‘negro’ for the 57th time. Will Get Out feel this dated 50 years down the line?

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