Tough task, divining profound sociological insight from a Bernie Mac-Ashton Kutcher flick. Especially since pitting Tracy-Hepburn-Poitier mano a movie against Mac-Kutcher is equivalent to a smart bomb against a squirt gun.
In title and premise, 2005's Guess Who—inverting the famous formula with an upscale black couple's daughter bringing home her paleface fiancé—more than begs comparison (it pleads and whimpers) to 1967's Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, which it hopes to piggyback to a few more box-office bucks from grayer moviegoers, younger ones already hooked by Kutcher's rising star. And in a more color-blind culture than the 1960s, many ticket-buyers may be lured more by plot resemblances to Meet the Parents/Meet the Fockers than the leftover echoes of a fuddy-duddy old film.
The original is a mid-20th-century think-flick with comedic touches, the "update" a 21st-century racial comedy with dramatic moments. Guess Who is a sporadically amusing piffle with sitcom ambitions, caring about race only insofar as it propels the plot toward a punch line or piece of shtick. Which is just dandy if it were funnier. It has nowhere near the mind-set of the film that came to dinner, itself a flawed and disingenuous riff on interracial romance, even if it emerged as an icon of socially progressive filmmaking, steeped in the nobility of the civil rights movement.
Beyond being the sweetly sentimental last pairing of Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn, as well as a showcase for the intense Sidney Poitier during his dazzling prime, Dinner earned kudos for its pioneering courage, and rightly so. It confronted miscegenation while racial animosity still raged in the courts and on the streets in the late-'60s, when interracial marriage was still criminalized in 16 states. That's gutsier than Hollywood proved itself with its delayed-reaction Vietnam films (The Deer Hunter, Apocalypse Now and Platoon were released in 1978, '79 and '86, respectively; Nixon completed troop withdrawal in '73). And Dinner's underlying question—will a well-off liberal couple live up to the lofty ideals they espouse when their daughter brings home a black fiancé?—packed social urgency. But the film stacks the deck, copping out at crucial points.
Poitier's dapper doctor, an accomplished, well-spoken man, was a dream catch, whether black, white or lime-green. What if their prospective son-in-law had been an impoverished black laborer, a man just as dignified and worthy of respect, but not as easy to reconcile with the liberal couple's image of themselves? Would the audience of the day have accepted it? The fiancé is 14 years his fiancée's senior, and the couple intends to wed after knowing each other only 10 days, providing both sets of parents more ammo for disapproval than just race. The script also sends the two off to live abroad, likely dodging the ugly racism they'd face in America. Black and white families wouldn't merge significantly, nor would the couple be forced to choose between them. And though Tracy's final speech blessing the union is the movie's most moving moment, it boils down to a white patriarch having the final word. (On a rueful note, their daughter represents the idealistic boomers who thought they would render racism obsolete. History, sadly, disagreed.)
Frankly, Dinner barely acknowledges racism's horrors, but its mere presence smashed a screen taboo. (Television's first interracial liplock, between Capt. Kirk and Lt. Uhura on Star Trek, followed in 1968.) Though mixed-race couples still stir some glances, if not glares, in public (in both red and blue states—let's not delude ourselves), they've been on-screen staples since, with varying impact; some explore the issue, others offer couples without comment (itself a commentary). A few of the more memorable (with Halle Berry the most ubiquitous half-a-couple): Save the Last Dance, O, Bulworth (Berry with Warren Beatty), Zebrahead, The Score, The Bodyguard, The Truth About Charlie, Mission Impossible 2 and Monster's Ball (Berry with Billy Bob Thornton). Even moviedom's most revered spy guy, 007, bedded black Bond babes in Live and Let Die, A View to a Kill and Die Another Day (Berry with Pierce Brosnan). And mixing different shades of non-Caucasians was addressed in movies such as Mississippi Masala.
But for social and cinematic power, the true through-line from Dinner winds up at 1991's Jungle Fever, Spike Lee's incendiary clash of cultures—black and Italian—reacting to the affair between married black architect Wesley Snipes and his single secretary, Annabella Sciorra (with, yes, Berry in a supporting role). But whereas Dinner fed off '60s idealism, lending it leeway to gloss over inconvenient obstacles, Fever aimed for '90s realism (from a black filmmaker's perspective) and confronted obstacles in a fashion that felt more genuine. Lee judged his protagonists' affair less from an angle of idealism and prejudice than practicality and survival. Jungle resolves less optimistically than Dinner as the lovers break apart after estrangement from their respective family and friends. Lee seems to conclude not that black-white coupling is inherently wrong, but that for now, black men are desperately needed within their own communities to strengthen the family unit (its weakness embodied by Samuel L. Jackson's wild-eyed, crack-addict brother to Snipes' character). Jungle Fever went beyond the tropes of bigotry-bad/tolerance-good to examine hard complexities and reach an honest conclusion void of false moralizing.
Now, Dinner is (re)-served (sorta) in the meaning-lite Guess Who, coasting on the sitcom-honed chops of its leads. And, like their sitcoms, their performances evaporate on impact. As much a comedy of a father refusing to let go of a daughter as a black man rejecting a white guy, it's a string-of-shtick duel between Mac's Daddy and Kutcher's flummoxed son-in-law-to-be. The modest laugh level rises only to moments such as the pair in bed together (predictable where-are-your-hands gags) and a moronic go-cart race as their competitive relationship escalates.
We're informed that Mac and his wife (Judith Scott) raised their daughter (Zoe Saldana) to respect all races, yet his surliness betrays him nearly from the first frame. Only one scene—around the dinner table, the black family guffaws at Kutcher's seemingly harmless racial jokes, until one strikes a nasty nerve, begging the question of how he knows so many—digs a bit beneath the punch lines to suggest a racial subtext with any teeth. But at the crucial point where the two leads inch toward a fragile understanding, the script swerves from its race-based premise, U-turning to gender-obsessed—the women are upset at their men for lying to them (how this happens isn't worth explaining)—to reach the Mac-Kutcher rapprochement. Guy Power unites them. The battle of the sexes is clearly a safer way to slide this puppy home, ease even the most mild racial sting any joke could have inflicted (unlikely), and avoid sending the audience home with any ideological brain cramps.
Occasionally, Guess Who slips in sly nods to its namesake. (When Tracy realized he accepted his daughter's choice in a moment of clarity, he uttered "I'll be damned" to himself; Mac trims it to just, "Damn!") But while Dinner at least put some thought, however simplified, into its finale, and had that ol' Tracy-Hepburn flame warming it, the bond forged between Mac and Kutcher—tolerance, brotherhood, you're OK, white boy—is obligatory and false.
Which is as much profound sociological insight as one can reasonably divine from this Bernie Mac-Ashton Kutcher flick. Or want to.