Guess Who

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.