Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967)

It amazes me “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” was ever needed. But so goes American history. It opens with a 1960s pop song playing as a giddy couple make its way from an airport to the girl’s childhood home, where she will introduce him to Mom and Dad. The couple is mixed race, her white (Katharine Houghton) and him black (Sidney Poitier). The taxi driver smirks. The parents (Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracey) are open liberals, but just how so? We find out in one long evening. Yes, it’s coy now, post-Loving vs. Virginia, but not too easy. Poitier’s fiancé puts a burden to the parents: Accept me and our whirlwind romance now or I call it off. Can anyone demand that? His doctor character is such a saint, it near smothers debate. The screenwriters intently did this to fully play the race card, but does it serve character? What if he were a reporter at Tracey’s old man’s paper? The dialogue is still sharp and Tracey –- then dying of cancer -- is powerful. Hepburn, too. Her crying is contagious. A-

The Philadelphia Story (1940)

I need to get this out: “The Philadelphia Story” opens on a gag of a man shoving a woman to the ground, and the joke she got “socked” runs throughout. That shit is not funny. Not then or now, or ever. That said, I do dearly love this deserved classic, the writing, banter, delivery, and cast: Katharine Hepburn, James Stewart, Cary Grant, Ruth Hussey, and the child actress Virginia Weildler, can you top that? Plot: Philly society divorcee Tracy (Hepburn) is up for marriage No. 2, but her ex (Cary Grant) hangs close because Tracy’s family loves the guy unconditionally, and in an elaborate plot he has two gossip mag reporters (Stewart and Hussey) in tow to record the surely doomed nuptials. See, the ex loves the bride, and as hijinks, misunderstandings, and boozy drinks flow, soon so does Stewart’s wordsmith. I shall not divulge more, just watch. This is comedy romance at the tallest order, it makes you swoon for everyone on screen, with Stewart pushing charm, Grant smoothness, and Hepburn brass and brains. Yes, many plot ideas are way past sexist and stagnant, but this film shines. Love the journalism jokes, too. A-