Guess Who Review

Guess Who
Percy Jones (Bernie Mac) is looking forward to meeting his daughter Theresa's new boyfriend - on paper, young stockbroker Simon (Kutcher) looks impressive. What Percy doesn't know is that Simon is white, and once he gets over the shock he's determined to brerak the happy couple up.

by Jo Berry |
Published on
Release Date:

22 Apr 2005

Running Time:

106 minutes

Certificate:

12A

Original Title:

Guess Who

The big problem with Guess Who is that it's based on a movie that wasn't quite as classic as some would have you think. 1967's Guess Who's Coming To Dinner? (in which a daughter brings home - shock horror! - a black boyfriend to meet her parents) was considered daring at the time, but its success was due more to the stellar casting of Sidney Poitier as the beau and Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy as the parents. Here we get Bernie Mac and, erm, Ashton Kutcher, a 21st-century twist (the parents and daughter are black and it's the boyfriend who's white), and an end result which plays like a weak, cliched retread of Meet The Parents.

It's all well-meaning enough, as Kutcher's Simon does his best to impress his girfriend's family during a weekend while potential dad-in-law Percy thwarts him at every turn. But Kutcher - who did some decent pratfalling in Dude Where's My Car? and delivered laughs in That '70s Show - gives a surprisingly restrained performance, so it's left to Mac to attempt to tickle our ribs as Percy insists the couple have separate rooms, baits the poor suitor at dinner and even challenges him to a testosterone-fuelled kart race. Which is sporadically amusing, perhaps, but we've seen it all before - and funnier - elsewhere.

Mildly amusing at times, but merely another step on Kutcher's recent path to big-screen blandness.
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