Review of Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967) by Mark G — 23 Nov 2008

Romances have the simplest plot structures of any movie. Introduce two people who should be in love. Introduce something to keep them apart, then spend the rest of the story overcoming that obstacle (in some way or another).

The problem that I see in this movie, that the two leads most overcome, is not prejudice and bigotry, but Katharine Houghton's own unreasonable demand that she must instantly have her father's blessing for her marriage to a man she met just ten days prior. I suppose this was the only way to depict a girl with a healthy relationship with her parents, whose fiance they have not met. Obviously Katharine Houghton mirrors the youth activists of the day, who not only demanded change, but demanded it instantly and universally. You suspect that if the young woman did not receive her father's blessing, she'd have immediately gone and tipped over some cop cars.