The Films of Stanley Kramer

Not as a Stranger

The Pride and the Passion

The Defiant Ones

On the Beach

Inherit the Wind

Judgment at Nuremberg

It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World

Ship of Fools

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (January 26/14)

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner follows Sidney Poitier's John Prentice and Katharine Houghton's Joey Drayton as they arrive at the home of her upper-crust parents (Spencer Tracy's Matt and Katharine Hepburn's Christina) to inform them of their coupling, with the film subsequently detailing the various conversations and debates that ensue over the course of one long evening. It's an appealing premise that's employed to watchable (if entirely uneven) effect by filmmaker Stanley Kramer, with the movie's affable atmosphere heightened and perpetuated by the efforts of an impressively charismatic cast. (Hepburn and Tracy are typically stellar here, of course, but it's Poitier's often electrifying turn that stands as a consistent highlight in the proceedings.) And although scripter William Rose has peppered the narrative with a handful of engrossing sequences - eg Christina tearfully discusses the situation with Matt, John angrily confronts his father, etc - Guess Who's Coming to Dinner never quite becomes the gripping drama that one might've anticipated based on the incendiary premise. Kramer's lackadaisical sensibilities pave the way for a midsection that's often as meandering as it is engrossing, and it's worth noting, too, that Tracy's climactic speech is robbed of its impact due to sheer overlength - which, in the end, confirms Guess Who's Coming to Dinner's place as an entertaining yet disappointingly forgettable piece of work.