Guess Who

Herald rating: **

Billed as a remake of Tracy, Hepburn and Poitier's 1967 mould-breaking drama of US race relations, Guess Who's Coming To Dinner. It might have been planned that way, but as soon as they painted Kevin Rodney Sullivan's name on the back of the director's chair, movie-goers were set up for a rerun of his urban comedies, How Stella Got Her Groove Back and Barbershop 2.

Ashton Kutcher stars as Simon, a diffident but rising Wall St broker planning to marry Theresa (Zoe Saldana), an artist. So they're off to the big house in the expensive suburb to stay with her parents: Percy (Bernie Mac), middle-aged and middle-level banker, and Marilyn (Judith Scott). Percy has already run Simon through his computer and found that he is worth quite a bit on paper but has recently lost his job and not told his wife-to-be.

It's an all-too familiar formula of broad, brash, race-based humour that treads - in fact, to Kiwi ears goes over - the line. You'll think you've seen it all before and if you've caught De Niro and Stiller in Meet the Parents and / or Meet the Fockers, you have.

In the DVD's making-of feature, Sullivan attempts to play the movie as a courageous commentary on race relations but ... sorry, no. He underlines how far Hollywood hasn't come in 38 years. There are seven deleted scenes and a gag reel that just ain't funny.

* DVD, Video rental today