Film
What's on at the cinema plus reviews of the latest movie and DVD releases
Guess Who (2005)
Director: Kevin Rodney Sullivan
Movie review
From Time Out London
Given the success of comedies like ‘Barbershop’, it’s unsurprising that this ‘Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner’ remake chooses to invert the race ratio of the original. Proud black father Percy (Bernie Mac) is not racist, though, you understand: he’d just rather tell his workmates that his prospective son-in-law is a basketball player named Jamal than a city boy called Simon (Ashton Kutcher). While the family’s surprise at Theresa’s white boyfriend provides initial chuckles, there’s inevitably less racial tension than in the 1967 original, and scant sharp humour or palatable romance to fill the resulting void. Kutcher is relatively restrained as the straight man to Mac’s stern father, who insists on sharing a bed with Simon to keep him from his daughter’s room, but while such set-pieces entertain they invite unflattering comparisons with bolder slapstick scenes from ‘Meet the Parents’ and its sequel. Ultimately, this all but abandons humour for sentiment, fashioning a mawkish end for an initially moderately amusing comedy.Author: AS
Time Out London Issue 1809: April 20-27 2005
Cast & crew
Director: Kevin Rodney Sullivan
Producer: Jenno Topping, Erwin Stoff, Jason Goldberg
Cast: Bernie Mac, Ashton Kutcher, Judith Scott, Zoë Saldana full cast
Rated: 12A
Duration: 103 mins
UK Release: Apr 22 2005
Most popular on this site
Top Stories
A holiday guide to movie dystopias
‘Going anywhere nice this summer, sir?’ To celebrate the release of Pixar’s sublime post-apocalyptic robo-romance ‘Wall-E’, Time Out offers a tour guide of the best future worlds in film
Eddie Murphy's Crimes Against Cinema
We all remember the comic highs of 'Beverly Hills Cop' and 'Bowfinger', but Eddie Murphy has been in a fair few stinkers as well. Time Out to presents a handy rundown of his ten darkest cinematic hours...
Olly Blackburn meets Nic Roeg
Nic Roeg is the director of ‘Performance’, ‘Don’t Look Now’ and, most recently, ‘Puffball’. Olly Blackburn is the man behind ‘Donkey Punch’, a thriller about a holiday gone wrong. We sent Olly to meet his legendary colleague
The nine rules of ’80s fantasy
Unpack the VCR and fire up the soda stream as Time Out celebrates a golden age of Hollywood family filmmaking






What do you think?
Post your review now