YMMV / Guess Who's Coming to Dinner

• Anvilicious: With John's incredible smarts and charisma and the frequent discussion of how senseless racism is, the movie frequently makes a point that interracial marriage isn't a bad thing. Considering the film was released only six months after the US Supreme Court struck down laws against interracial marriage, it's quite understandable why this would be pushed so blatantly throughout the movie.
• Award Snub: It was nominated for ten Academy Awards and won two, but Sidney Poitier wasn't nominated. This has been theorized as being a result of him splitting votes with his similarly acclaimed work from In the Heat of the Night, which also wasn't nominated.
• Designated Love Interest: Given the incredible lengths the narrative goes to just to paint John as a model minority suitor — the kind of patient, brilliant and extraordinary man that would challenge any bigoted white father grasping to find fault with him — a common joke is that he's far too good for Joanna. This isn't even a modern take, as the MAD parody, written in 1968, has the parents of "Sidney Sensational" burst in and drag him away to keep him from ruining his medical career.
  Mr. Sensational: If you think, after we've worked our fingers to the BONE, so that Sidney could be the GREATEST DOCTOR in the free world...
  Mrs. Sensational: ...That we'd let him marry a SILLY NINNY like YOU... you're NUTS!!
• Fair for Its Day: John is made perfect in every way, from being a brilliant doctor to a loving fiancé, to hammer in that there's nothing wrong with interracial marriage. The film was released six months after the landmark Supreme Court decision Loving v. Virginia, which legalized interracial marriage on a federal level; when the film began production, its central relationship was outlawed in over a dozen states. The filmmakers made sure that John's race was the only viable objection to John and Joanna's relationship just to make sure their message got through. Today the Flawless Token trope is considered lazy writing at best and bigoted at worst, but in the 1960s this film was revolutionary.
• Harsher in Hindsight: During Tracy's monologue at the end, he mentions that the love he feels for his wife "will be there if I live to be 110!" He died weeks after the movie was finished, and Katharine Hepburn — by all accounts the love of his life — never watched the finished film because losing him was too painful for her.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: John mentions that Joey believes that all their children will be president one day. More than 40 years later, there's a part-African president. Furthermore, John and Joey met each other in Hawaii, just like Obama's parents did.
• Tear Jerker: Spencer Tracy's closing monologue of the film, the actor's last performance. Katharine Hepburn never watched this movie because she couldn't stand to see Tracy's last work.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Some people think it might've been nice if John's son had survived, so the audience could see his reaction to suddenly having a white stepmother who might not be much older than he.
• Values Dissonance:
  • Perhaps it's a measure of progress when you compare the audience reaction in 1967: "She's marrying a Negro; that's crazy!" to now: "She's marrying a man she only met 10 days earlier; that's crazy!"
  • The wide age gap between John and Joanna can also play a larger part in modern audience reaction.
  • Though the film was made to support interracial marriages, there are no intimate scenes between John and Joanna, apart from a brief kiss that is only seen from a cab driver's rear view mirror.
• Values Resonance:
  • Although the race issues were clumsily handled for its times, you can understand the father objecting to his daughter marrying a man she met 10 days ago.
  • One theme of the film is that even those who believe themselves to be very progressive people, like Joanna's parents, may still have to confront their unexpected bigotry, an idea that still comes up in modern discussions of racism. Get Out would later focus on this, albeit far less subtly.

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