Watched Guess Who last night. Normally I'm not a fan of Ashton Kutcher. But I liked him in this movie!Last year's remake of the Spencer Tracy/Katharine Hepburn/Sidney Poitier classic, the movie switched the races of the characters involved. Interestingly, it also did not add both sets of parents to the plot, like the original. So it was kind of like Meet the Parents but with a vaguely interracial dynamic. I say vague, because there are times when the scriptwriters tried to address the fact that racism still exists in our post-Civil Rights movement society: Theresa mentions the stares they get, and Simon's state of employment. But these are incidental to the larger comic plot. I appreciated Guess Who's curveballs regarding NASCAR, single mothers, metrosexuals, and ... size. The song sequences in the car were funny. Overall, a funny movie in and of itself. But not necessarily a good remake.
The original film came out the same year as Loving v. Virginia, so naturally it was not a comedy. Tracy and Hepburn hashed it out about hypocrisy and faux-liberal values. The two fathers commiserate about racial segregation and idealism and reality. It was groundbreaking and brutally honest. I think Guess Who was a little tainted by political correctness and so couldn't be.
And speaking of loving... finally got around to reading this month's Atlantic, which had this huge spread on online dating sites. Apparently there's this trend to try and quantify or make "scientific" the way they match people. The creators of competing match-up database systems (which are all patented, btw) explain the differences between their product and other sites. It was a fascinating article -- but from the description, the databases weren't really "scientific." Reading the methodology, it's all based on psychology profiles and qualitative research like interviews. A few of the sites devised questions based on hormone research. But though it was all fascinating, I found myself the Doubting Thomasina as usual -- how can you quantify emotions?
2 comments:
I just read that Atlantic article recently as well... I found it quite interesting - the different approach they're taking rather than the match.com type of approach. The combination of psychology and extensive questionaires is certainly intriguing - I'm kind of curious to check them out just to see what happens.
I agree that it's one of those things that's extremely difficult to quantify, but it seems like they're probably making steps in the right direction. Not foolproof, for sure, but better than the tools available in the past? Hard to say...
I saw both "Guess Who" movies. I remember liking the old one, though the Tracy/Hepburn stuff was a bit overdone: geez, here we are, good liberal white folk, and our hippie daughter goes and gets herself a superhero doctor Sidney Poitier. I mean, Jesus, Sidney Poitier's whiter in that movie than most white people.
But anyway, A for effort.
And I'm glad the Bernie Mac/Ashton Kutcher movie at least gave the race issue a go, even if they again mollified most of the racial conflict. A for effort, too.
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