#99 on 1998 AFI 100 Greatest Movies of All Time
So this movie was on the original list, but removed from the list in 2007. But we are watching them all (well, there will be a few exceptions, but that is down the road a bit). Anyway, neither of us had seen this movie before. Mike was excited about Sidney Poitier, who he has only ever seen before in Sneakers and one other movie, neither of which are the movies Sidney Poitier is famous for. I would like to take this moment to point out that Sidney Poitier was in The Jackal, and my friend Jared and I used to watch that movie all the time. The only bad thing about The Jackal is Richard Gere’s Irish accent, but the rest of that movie is kickass. But, back to this movie…
As I said, Mike was excited about Poitier, but not so excited about Katharine Hepburn. Mike is not a fan of Ms. Hepburn. He used to not be a fan of Lawrence Olivier, but then we watched Rebecca, and he started to get over it. Since then, I’ve been trying to find a Katharine Hepburn movie that will help him like her more, but so far it’s been a no go. Although, she is in a number of movies on the AFI list, so maybe one of them will change his mind. Spencer Tracy is also in this movie, and about halfway through the movie, Mike sat up and went “oh, that’s Spencer Tracy!”
So, most of you know what this movie is about because it’s pretty famous and because they did a terrible remake a number of years ago with Bernie Mac and Ashton Kutcher. But this movie was a pretty big deal. The plot, basically, is that a rich white girl brings her fiancé home to meet her parents, and he is an African-american. Of course, he is also a well-respected medical doctor who went to Yale and is famous for being great. I understand that they needed to make the character easier for white audiences to accept, but the one thing that really bothered me about it, and maybe this is a sign of changing times, is that he was 37 and she was 23. That’s a pretty sizable age gap. What can a 37 year old respected doctor possible have in common with a 23 year old girl fresh out of college? It seriously bothers me.
So, they come home and are going to get married, and both sets of parents have to come to grips with how the world is changing, and how difficult the young couple’s life will be and how hard it will be for their children. But, seriously, no one thinks about the 14 year age difference, because apparently that was no big deal. I will say that Sidney Poitier gives a wonderful performance showing his discomfort with the situation. However, he and Katharine Houghton have absolutely no chemistry whatsoever. I found it very hard to believe that they were in love. The most believable relationship in the movie is between Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy, but that shouldn’t be a surprise. The mother-daughter relationship is also very believable, but Katharine Houghton is Katharine Hepburn’s niece, so that’s not all that surprising either. I wish they had found someone Katharine Houghton could have actually been in love with, and maybe that chemistry would have been better.
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