Guess Who Movie Review:


In the immortal 1967 classic, “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?”, a couple’s (Spencer Tracey, Katharine Hepburn) attitudes are challenged when their daughter brings home her prospective fiancé (Sidney Poitier), who happens to be black.

The film was a landmark of its time on so many fronts and challenged so many attitudes of the time. It also marked legendary performances from both Poitier and Tracey but it was Hepburn who walked away with the Oscar in 1967. The film also marked an amazing year for Poitier who made three of his most beloved classics all in the same year. Poitier also starred in “To Sir, With Love” and “In the Heat of the Night” all in 1967.

The only similarity between the 1967 film and the new film seems to be the first two words of the main title. Thank, God!

In the 2005 slapstick comedy, Bernie Mac plays Percy, an upstanding and successful loan officer who claims he can size up anyone he meets in 5 seconds or less. Well that seems irrelevant when his daughter Theresa (Zoe Saldana) brings home her future fiancé Simon (Ashton Kutcher), who happens to be white. Let the games begin!

I had a lot of problems with this film which are mainly due to the fact that the film is so blatantly formulaic, dull and makes Bernie Mac’s character so unlikable. It’s almost like the filmmakers were trying for a reverse-racial comedy inspired by “Meet the Parents” but instead ended up with one starring Ashton Kutcher.

There is one scene in the film that probably summed up my feelings completely when watching the film. Kutcher’s character lets it slip that he knows some rather racial jokes and Mac’s proud father-figure urges him to share them at the dinner table. Kutcher’s first five jokes are innocent and everyone laughs. That is until about the sixth one. Then Grandpa pounces across the table at Kutcher’s character in a fit of rage.

The racial tension, misrepresentation and complete disregard for how far the film should go or can go seems to be held back by a very thin rope attached to a very large gorilla. But what was so shocking was that the rope never snapped. And for me this some how made these characters more caricatures than human beings.

The great thing about the original film is that the gorilla is dealt with and addressed and even teaches us a valuable lesson about humanity and race. The new film doesn’t even try.

In all these role-reversal comedies or dramas I always wonder what would happen if the tables were turned. But because these characters seem so detached I didn’t even think to ponder such a question. Why address such an important question to the likes of Ashton Kutcher?

My favorite scene in the film is towards the end where we have a heart to heart between father and daughter. The scene reveals a lot of what the film should be saying and for the only time in the picture shows two characters as close as they can be to being human. We need more moments like this and more dealing with the obvious. We are all human no matter what color, religious denomination or age we are. Let all those incredible feelings that make us human help us to understand and overcome the issues addressed in this film.

I have to admit that I did smirk at some scenes but for the most part I was just wondering when that obviously huge gorilla at the centre of this piece was going to strike.

(1.5 out of 5)

So Says the Soothsayer



Dean Kish

Messing with a classic movie can be dangerous business, and “Guess Who” achieves only a modicum of success. This sometimes amusing film updates “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?” by reversing the story’s racial representation. Ashton Kutcher stars as the unwelcome boyfriend originally played by Sidney Poitier, and Bernie Mac takes on Spencer Tracy’s disappointed father role. Obviously going more for laughs than the original, Guess Who relies too heavily on the comic talents of Kutcher and Mac, rather than on a meaty script or cinematic artistry.

However, while poking fun at the problems of inter-racial romance, the movie reminds viewers that discrimination and stereotypes are still alive and well in the new millennium. One scene involving a number of racial jokes disgusted me, but I have to admit I’ve heard -- and, sadly, chuckled at -- some of them before.

Kutcher (“Just Married”) and the perky Zoe Saldana (“The Terminal”) portray lovers who intend to announce their engagement during the weekend Saldana’s parents (Mac and Judith Scott) host a party celebrating renewal of their wedding vows. Saldana hasn’t told her family about her new boyfriend’s race, and Kutcher can’t help being frightened by the prospect of meeting her dad, whose photos make him look immensely intimidating. Complicating matters, Kutcher quits his job without telling Saldana – and this is a big deal, especially since Saldana’s father wants her to date only men with good jobs.

When Kutcher and Mac (“Bad Santa”) meet, any romance in the movie takes a back seat to the relationship between the two men. Ebony and ivory clash as these very different guys try to outdo each other in a silly go-cart race, spur-of-the-moment sports activities and tango dancing – all of which give rise to just a few humorous moments during their extensive screen time together.

The movie’s funniest sequence belongs to Kutcher alone. It involves a series of frantic “make-up” calls to Saldana after she finds out about his jobless situation. Pleading, cajoling, demanding, wooing – you name it – he tries everything he can think of to win her back. Kutcher’s acting here may be the best he’s ever done. It certainly proves he doesn’t need pratfalls or slapstick to make us laugh.

Although Mac failed to impress me during most of “Guess Who,” he redeems himself somewhat in the final “wedding vows” scene. That man can sing (or lypsynch?), and he really knows the right moves! Unfortunately, it’s a case of too little, too late.

I don’t want to end this review on such a harsh note, so let me say “Guess Who” is not a total waste of time. Without being too preachy, it’s a painless way to learn lessons about the dangers of racial prejudice as well as the importance of honesty in a romantic relationship. And finally, for some strange reason, I’m compelled to mention again how much I enjoyed Ashton Kutcher’s memorable telephone antics.

Betty Jo Tucker

If you never even begin to compare this film to the classic that inspired it (Guess Who's Coming to Dinner), then it's a perfectly enjoyable bit of fluffy farce. Rather than an astute examination of society, this is just a goofy male-bonding romp with a predictable rom-com plot.

Simon (Kutcher) is terrified about meeting his girlfriend's (Saldaña) notoriously protective father Percy (Mac), especially when he realises that she never mentioned that he's white. And sure enough, Percy is not thrilled. Over the course of the weekend, Simon and Percy square off against each other. But the challenges of maintaining their relationships with their women eventually force them to work together.

Basically, the inverted racial element is completely irrelevant, since the filmmakers avoid any actual social commentary in lieu of goofy jokes and wacky set pieces. This is essentially just Meet the Parents with a different pair of actors; and like that film it basically ignores the female characters so father and prospective son-in-law can bicker and bond. Fortunately, Mac and Kutcher have strong chemistry that makes their interaction entertaining. Mac wins us over with his overwhelming personality; Kutcher is surprisingly effective as the sparky nice guy. Their snappy dialog is by far the best thing here, and it carries us through ill-conceived comedy sequences (such as the go-cart race) and lame script cliches (Curtis-Brown's camp party planner, Williams's cranky grandpa).

And even though their roles are woefully underwritten, Saldaña and Scott (as her mother, Percy's wife) inject some life into their characters. There's a nice feistiness in the interaction between all four of these people--their relentless stubbornness is extremely realistic, as is the awkward resolution to their various impasses. On the other hand, the racial humour is extremely strained, from the corny songs on the radio to the string of dinner-table jokes. And it all gets deeply sappy in the end, as if there's some sort of important message in here somewhere. Yeah right. In other words, as long as you're not looking for something meaningful, you might actually enjoy this.

Rich Cline

For Simon (Kutcher) and Theresa (Saldanna) announcing their engagement at Theresa’s parent’s 25th anniversary party sounded perfect, in principle but Simon hadn’t even met her family yet. Her father Percy Jones (Mac) has never liked any of Theresa’s boyfriends and had already run a credit check on Simon. Even though he had passed with flying colours and looked like the perfect suitor for his eldest daughter, Theresa had forgot to tell her family that Simon was white.

Hollywood’s passion for remakes continues unabated with a re-imagining of the Oscar winning ‘Guess who’s coming to diner?’ but this one is different, or so they would like you to believe.

With the original starring Spencer Tracy, Katherine Hepburn and Sydney Poitier, this update really had a lot to live up to and it fails miserably. The original revolved around a daughter bringing her black fiancée to meet her white middle class family. This was a touchy and even controversial subject in 1967 but the film became an award winner. The 2005 update switches the roles around and with a stroke of genius we now have a white fiancée meeting a black family.

While the filmmakers and the cast say this movie isn’t about race but how a father is protective of his daughter and for most part it is, the line ‘But he’s white’ is used far too often. This is the so called running joke through the entire film as the film emphasises the differences between race and culture but in this modern day and age the differences are becoming less and less relevant, not according to Hollywood however. It is still not really acceptable for a mixed couple to headline a film. When is the last time a major studio movie had a mixed leading couple who became intimate, when there wasn’t a major star involved (Tom Cruise and Thandie Newton in Mission Impossible 2) or a British influence (Pierce Brosnan and Halle Berry in Die Another Day)? It just doesn’t happen so it is up to the smaller budget movies to break those boundaries and ‘Guess Who’ does nothing to help this.

Trying to break down the barriers of race relations with an extremely small Hollywood hammer ‘Guess Who’ ends up been a lot more racist than it should be. Show that racism is an issue, whatever your colour or ethnicity drags the film and many of its characters into stereotypes, alienating both sides of the audience it is desperately trying to get together.

The performances don’t exactly help the cause either. Bernie Mac is a gifted comedic actor but this character has no range and has nothing for the actor to work with. He should have just been an over protective father but the race card is played far too many times for this to work. Ashton Kutcher just can’t act. After slightly raising his game in ‘The Butterfly Effect’, he plummets back down to his previous level with this rather annoying and unbelievable performance. You just can’t see what Theresa sees in him. The shining light is Zoë Saldanna. Theresa is a girl anyone could fall for and she succeeds creating a character that you instantly like and can route for.

‘Guess Who’ is a film about mixed race relationships that should have just been a movie about an other protective dad. The way the film uses race as a joke makes you think that if the roles had been like the original version, would it have been as acceptable?

Jamie Kelwick

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