Guess Who's Coming to Dinner Reviews

William Rose, with a stilted screenplay, and Stanley Kramer, who literally makes this dinner hour stand still--say we're not in. Big deal in its day, but really safe, lame melodrama, and an unfitting finale to the Tracy-Hepburn screen partnership. Bland little Houghton arrives home after a Hawaiian vacation to announce to parents Tracy and Hepburn that she is about to wed a brilliant research physician, Poitier, who is Black. This creates considerable social turmoil for the upper-middle-class family. Poitier tells the parents that unless they give their unreserved consent he will not marry their daughter, thereby putting the responsibility for the interracial marriage squarely upon their shoulders. After some soul-searching and breaking with friends who oppose miscegenation, the parents back up the young couple. Tracy looks tired in this draggy production; he died soon afterward, and it's infuriating to watch him sweat to inject fire into such pap. Hepburn, with her blithely resolute air and great, watering eyes, is magnanimous as always; watching her watch Tracy during his big speech is one of the film's two great Moments. The other? Hepburn in the driveway, banishing an ex-friend: "Don't say anything, Hillary, just---go."