Review of Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967) by K S — 24 Jun 2008

My big problem with Ordinary People was that it was full of soulless white folks maneuvering through potent issues without offering much insight on anything. It isn't a bad movie, and I could relate to a lot of the struggles of the son, but it was so largely disengaging that most of it has left me already. Guess Who's Coming To Dinner suffers the exact same curse - it is a stiflingly white movie, and with a black main character no less!

I found the movie to be pretty decent, but my film professor brought up an interesting point about it - this movie is all about white liberal guilt. The Sidney Poitier character is a cipher, designed to be untouchable by audience perceptions so that the writers are free to attack the bare issue of racism. It's a noble goal but there are still problems, mainly in that the dramatic impetus of the movie centers entirely around the patriarchal white man. Food for thought, you know?

Well-acted and well-written (if agitatingly fond of the monologues), I guess I can't hate this movie too much. I don't think it really meant any harm by what it was doing, but there's no edge here, no controversy. It has aged very poorly.