Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #50424 in DVD
• Released on: 2002-03-04
• Rating: Parental Guidance
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: PAL, Widescreen
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: Arabic, Bulgarian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Italian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 103 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
Spencer Tracy's last performance was in this well-meaning, handsome film by Stanley Kramer about a pair of white parents (Tracy and Katharine Hepburn) trying to make sense of their daughter's impending marriage to an African American doctor (Sidney Poitier). Guess Who's Coming to Dinner has been knocked over the years for padding conflict and stoking easy liberalism by making Poitier's character in every socioeconomic sense a good catch: but what if Kramer had made this stranger a factory worker? Would the audience still find it as easy to accept a mixed-race relationship? But there's no denying the drawing power of this movie, which gets most of its integrity from the stirring performances of Tracy and Hepburn. When the former (who had been so ill that the production could not get completion insurance) gives a speech toward the end about race, love and much else, it's impossible not to be affected by the last great moment in a great actor's life and career. --Tom Keogh

Special Features
1.85 Wide Screen
DVD 5
English
Region 2

Synopsis
A liberal white couple (Hepburn and Tracy, in Tracy's last appearance) put their platitudes to the test. They always taught their daughter (Houghton, Hepburn's niece) that all people are created equal, regardless of race or religion... until she unexpectedly brings home a black doctor (Poitier) and announces that they're engaged. Mostly interesting for a look at '60s attitudes toward race and the performances of Tracy and Hepburn. Academy Award Nominations: 10, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor--Spencer Tracy.

Customer Reviews

You shouldn't miss it
I saw this film last night for the first time in years. I didn't remember it very well and I was afraid it might have not aged well. After all, mixed race marriages are quite common nowadays so, why should the film be relevant to today's audiences? The fact is it is. Apart from the fact that there's still plenty of racism around, I am sure that may parents still would have the reactions and thoughts that those parents have. And even if you disagree with me here, just think how it would be if you happened to be gay and had to introduce a partner to your parents.

But to me the best of the film is the chemistry between the actors. This is really the best of the film, and to me perhaps the reason why I enjoyed it so much. The supporting characters are great (the maid, the monsignor and the gallery manager, Sidney Poitier's father). Sidney Poitier and the girl (can't remember her name) are perfectly convincing as a young couple in love, afraid of what the parents might thing but strong enough to fight for it. But the best is really Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy. She won an Oscar (number 2 out of 4), he missed it, but both of them are simply marvellous. At moments, you get insights to their own lives, like in no other film they did together: the way they look at each other at certain points in the film is not just acting to them, I'm sure it was real. Watch it and wonder why films aren't this good any more.

A masterpiece....
I saw this movie completely by chance as i stumbled across it on tv one night. Ended up watching it with my mother (who barely sights the tv except to watch the news!) and brother. We all absolutely loved it.

The story deals with racism in days gone by. When Joanna Drayton tells her parents that she has bagged herself a doctor their reaction is not quite what she expects.

The script is unbelievable and even though the movie revolves around a serious topic there are still several laugh-out-loud moments. I hope no one takes offence to that especially seeing as that I am of colour too and managed juuust fine.

There are no words to describe the acting. Katherine Hepburn plays Joanna's mother and Spencer Tracy her father. If you have ever seen a Katherine Hepburn movie you know what I mean about there being no words. If you haven't, what are you waiting for?! Start with this one. You won't be disappointed.

Enjoy...

KRAMER MAKES ANOTHER IMPORTANT AND TIMELY MOVIE
A prominent Australian filmmaker once commented, the job of a film director is to entertain. If he can teach or get a message across while entertaining that's even better. Kramer is one of those filmmakers who managed to do both, and he generally succeeded.

Look at what Kramer made, before he put GUESS WHO'S COMING TO DINNER on the screen: ON THE BEACH (1959 about nuclear war); INHERIT THE WIND (1960 about religion versus the Darwinian theory of evolution in Tennessee); JUDGEMENT AT NUREMBERG (1961, raising question about world culpability in the crimes against humanity perpetrated by the Nazis). There are no flies on Kramer.

I recall the stir created by GUESS WHO'S COMING TO DINNER when it first came out in 1967. Americans were being tested and challenged, to say the least, by the Vietnam War and the civil rights movement. At one end, white liberals were risking their lives in the south along side African-American civil rights activists. At the other end, racist bigots north and south were calling activists of any color communists, and much worse. Sometimes, in the heat of the summer with racial tensions and frustrations rising, some cities were torched. Into this cauldron Kramer dropped GUESS WHO'S COMING TO DINNER. I can still recall white liberals and radicals condemning Sydney Poitier's character with slurs such as "super spade" because Kramer seemd he felt obliged to create an African-American male hero who could walk on water. In Kramer's world, an American black man had to be superman merely to qualify for marrying a middle class attractive, white air head. The bigots condemned the film because .... well, that's what bigots do.

I believe that Kramer did what he thought was necessary for telling the story of an interracial marriage in1960s America. And, as a matter of fact, when all is said and done he may have hit the nail on the head. He showed what kind of fantastic credentials an African-American male needed for even the most super liberal white father to accept him as a son-in-law for his carefully cultivated, racially oblivious daughter. So then, while today's racially enlightened viewer may be offended by such directorial excesses, Kramer's point was, I think, that this is how bad things are in America. A white super liberal has a lot of trouble with his daughter marrying an African-American superman. If that was what Kramer was up to with this film, then his point was well taken!

For the many Tracy-Hepburn reasons others mentioned here, a lot of pathos was added to the film. My complaint is somewhat trivial .... but it has some merit, I think. The occasional crude and rude manner in which the character played by Tracy expresses himself to his daughter and wife seemed out of character. He was supposed to be a gruff two-fisted, newspaperman. But when near the end of the movie he barks at his daughter to "shut up" and later asks Tillie their maid, "when the hell are we eating?" this was out of character. It was poor directing rather than poor acting. Of course, Tracy was literally only a few days from actually dying of cancer. And so one can jump to the conclusion that Tracy's medical condition caused the lapses. But after Tracy's absolutely superb soliloquey in the last minutes of GUESS WHO'S COMING TO DINNER, Kramer owed it to Tracy to make his excit scene both in the film and in life perfect. Tracy could have done it with Kramer's help. Because Kramer allowed his film to be made less than perfectly, I couldn't give it a perfect 5-star rating.

Otherwise, Kramer succeeded in getting an important social message across while at the same time entertaining. This makes GUESS WHO'S COMING TO DINNER an excellent, if occasionally flawed, work of art.