OVP: Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967)

Film: Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967)
Stars: Spencer Tracy, Sidney Poitier, Katharine Hepburn, Katharine Houghton, Beah Richards, Roy E. Glenn, Cecil Kellaway
Director: Stanley Kramer
Oscar History: 10 nominations/2 wins (Picture, Director, Actor-Spencer Tracy, Actress-Katharine Hepburn*, Supporting Actor-Cecil Kellaway, Supporting Actress-Beah Richards, Original Screenplay*, Film Editing, Art Direction, Original Score)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Sometimes when you're watching a movie you have to continually remind yourself that it was made almost fifty years ago.  The reality is that ideas in movies, particularly in films that were important socially, frequently become outdated and provincial the further you get from the issue.  The public evolves, and what was once groundbreaking no longer seems that way in the eyes of the audience.  It's why arguably the best social issue films are those that are as honest as possible, and in many ways skirt making it about "the issue" (Brokeback Mountain, for example, is hardly a "social issue" film at all, becoming more of a romance and a film simply about prejudice in general, which is something that unfortunately never seems to disappear).  Guess Who's Coming to Dinner doesn't have this foresight, instead focusing on the there-and-now.  That is forgivable (not all films have to be omnipotent) but seeing a dated plot combined with overacting and a script that can't decide whether it's funny or wants to have something serious to say is not forgivable, and this, one of the last four AFI's 100 Years films I had to see (I'll be done with the list in the next couple months or so-and yes, I picked a better-respected film to end the list), was a large disappointment considering its vaunted status as a film classic.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film follows John (Poitier) and Joanna (Houghton) as they decide to introduce themselves (they have recently been engaged) to their parents.  Joanna's parents Christina (Hepburn) and Matt (Tracy) are at first comically dumbfounded, and then after a while have a serious worry about the future of their daughter and her intended.  The same could be said for John's parents (Glenn and Richards).  In both cases the women are given to a more romantic impulsiveness while the men have a more practical sensibility.  The film continues with the same repeated argument over their happiness vs. their personal safety/future, before we get to the inevitable conclusion, with Matt providing a speech about how his love for Christina being a strong model for why the two should in fact get married.

The film is ridiculous for about every reason imaginable, but the first giant elephant in the room is that John and Joanna shouldn't get married, but it has absolutely nothing to do with race.  These two met each other eleven days prior, have a fourteen-year age gap, and have very few shared experiences.  Those are all perfectly reasonable objections, and one wonders why they made the story about them so impulsive-couldn't she have know him for a year or something like that?  I'm surprised in the entirety of the film that no one used that as a reason to object to the union-they haven't made it through an entire lunar cycle together, which is a sign that marriage should be off of the table.  The entire film seems predicated on the only objection being the race of the two individuals, when in fact that (even in 1967) shouldn't remotely be at the top of the list of parents should worry over.

The film also makes painstaking points to make the film more palatable to all audiences, but in the process declaws the entire film and makes it decidedly uninteresting.  The first is that Matt and Christina, the director insists, are not going to remotely be coming at this from a position of prejudice.  Perhaps Stanley Kramer wanted to play the Avenue Q "everyone's a little bit racist" card here, but it never comes across that way-we never seem to see Matt and Christina object because John is black, but only because their daughter and he will have a hard life.  It would have been more interesting if they'd spent some time with Matt focusing on the fact that if John were white, he'd be thrilled by the match.  And that's the other thing to take issue with in this movie-John is too perfect.  He's a wildly decorated medical doctor, frequently making trips to foreign countries to help needy children, an upstanding widower who is willing to sacrifice his own personal happiness for Joanna.  Forget the fact that he's too good for his flighty, impetuous fiance-he's too good for anyone.  I'm surprised Kate Hepburn didn't try to marry him herself.  The fact that they made him flawless helps the argument of why they should get married, but once again it sacrifices the real, which makes issue films dated-realism is key, and even if an issue becomes more for the history books than the headlines, a film will still be relevant if it remains honest.  Having John play the ultimate Manic Pixie Dream Guy is not doing that.

The film received ten Oscar nominations, a staggering number, though it's hard to explain why in hindsight.  The score is saccharine and overwrought, the screenplay has trouble with tone and consistently contradicts itself, the editing is nothing special (the most impressive part of it is the way that it tries to hide Spencer Tracy's clearly debilitating health), and the art direction is just a lush San Francisco home.  The film received a quartet of acting nominations, and I can't quite decide which one I support the most.  Arguably the most intriguing is Cecil Kellaway's as a family friend of Matt's who is trying to convince him the match is a sound one.  Kellaway, who had been nominated for an Oscar nineteen years earlier, is quite charming as a priest with a fondness for the bottle and who doesn't see what the hoopla is about, and while he's not giving great acting, his is the only comic portion of the film that doesn't feel glib.  Beah Richards, who made a career out of playing every African-American actor in Hollywood's mother at some point in her career, gets one gigantic speech to Spencer Tracy late in the film that feels wholly out-of-character and completely off-kilter (it's arguably the most out-of-place scene in the film), and the rest of the time she just sits and reacts to things-the role is a trite one, and Richards' delivery adds nothing to the role.  It feels like a throwaway nomination in a weak year for that category (though a strong one everywhere else-1967 being one of cinema's best years) for a longtime character actress.

The leading pair is hard to judge.  You don't get much more storied than Spencer Tracy and Kate Hepburn, particularly when they're together, and it's hard not to be impressed by the incredible backstory of the making of this film (with Hepburn and director Stanley Kramer putting their salaries on the line to get the studio to back the making of the film, as Tracy was so ill that he died several dies after shooting ended).  The tears in the final soliloquy may be Kate's best most in the film, but it's hard not to see them as tears for Tracy, not for her fictional Matt.  Otherwise they are trading on their most indisputable talents (Hepburn's ability with timing and Tracy's Broadway-engrained stage presence) with little else to lend itself.  Hepburn could play this role in her sleep, and yet frequently doesn't seem to get the motives of her character.  Considering she was up against Faye Dunaway's Bonnie Parker and Anne Bancroft's Mrs. Robinson, two of the most iconic characters in the movies, it feels like sentiment won her that second Oscar more than anything else, as she's been far better before and is, while always watchable, boring and listless in this role.  Tracy, whom I have less of a passion for than Hepburn, seems to float too much from opinion-to-opinion, relying heavily on the disjointed script without making any sort of personal assumptions about his own character or trying to do some of the heavy lifting.  As a result his Matt is a contradiction, and not a good one.

We'll end there, but I'm hoping you have thoughts on this film, one of the few "classics" I've never seen but I'm guessing you have.  If so, share in the comments!