Guess what? ‘Guess Who?’ perfectly average
In 1967, Katherine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy and Sidney Poitier starred in “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?” The subject of interracial relationships was pretty serious stuff 38 years ago, and the fact that the film was a comedy made it even more controversial.
Four decades later, the movie finds itself remade as a lackluster, by-the-numbers buddy movie starring Bernie Mac and Ashton Kutcher. I guess in some way this is a good thing, because the subject matter is so superficially treated you get the impression that interracial dating and marriage is really not such a big deal anymore. If this is the case, why make the movie at all? Wouldn’t a press release (“Race No Longer an Issue in Dating”) have sufficed?
In this remake, the roles are reversed. Instead of a white girl bringing her black boyfriend home to meet her bigoted father, we have Theresa Jones (Zoe Saldana) bringing home her hotshot up-and-coming stockbroker beau, Simon (Kutcher), to meet her bigoted father, Percy (Mac), and long-suffering mother, Marilyn (Judith Scott).
Theresa hasn’t told her parents that Mr. Right is Mr. White, and hilarity is supposed to ensue when Mac and Kutcher lock horns.
Percy doesn’t like Simon — not so much because he’s white but because he thinks Simon is hiding something. The issue of Simon’s race is dealt with on the most superficial of levels — mostly by pointing out that Simon is white, as if that’s an argument in and of itself.
Well, we all know what’s going to happen: The two men eventually grow to love each other as future father- and son-in-law; the young couple will have a stupid fight, but make up just in the nick of time; subplots introduced in the beginning of the film to advance the plot (like the issue of a $50,000 stock purchase) will be quickly forgotten.
There are a few good chuckles in the film, and Mac and Kutcher do a pretty good job dealing with such thin comic material. But ultimately, “Guess Who” is a mediocre, extended sitcom episode. Wait for the DVD.
GRADE: C