Guess Who? is the updated version of the Sidney Poitier classic Guess Who's Coming to Dinner. This time around it's played for laughs with a racial role reversal to boot. Ashton Kutcher plays the Poitier role as the earnest, successful white guy who finds love across racial lines with Zoë Saldana. Bernie Mac (in the Spencer Tracy role) plays the middle class father whose lessons in tolerance are put to the test when he meets his daughter's new beau.

Think Guess Who's Coming to Dinner meets Meet the Parents, and you get an idea of what Guess Who? is trying to accomplish. Simon (Kutcher) and Theresa (Saldana) go off to the Jersey suburbs for the weekend to attend her parents' 25th anniversary bash and to announce their engagement. Only Theresa has neglected to tell her parents that her great new boyfriend is -gasp- white. And Simon has neglected to tell Theresa that he's quit his great job. Despite teaching tolerance and color-blindness, her parents still need to come to terms with this latest twist, especially her father, Percy (Mac).

The chemistry between Mac and Kutcher makes the movie work - when it works. The comedic timing they've honed on their respective television shows (The Bernie Mac Show and That' 70's Show) translates well on the big screen. The audience laughed loudly and laughed often at their antics. I just wished the comedy were a little sharper; instead the jokes try to take the politically correct high road working hard not to offend anyone. The one exception is the big dinner scene where Percy goads Simon into telling some 'black' jokes. This is about the only scene that attempts to be provocative and edgy I wish there were a few more of those.

My main problem with Guess Who? is the same problem I had with the original. In Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, Sidney Poitier had to be the perfect black man for him to even be remotely acceptable. And perfect often means lacking a true identification with his blackness. He was a white man who happened to be in a black body. The same can be said of Zoe Saldana's Theresa. It's easy for Simon to fall for her because she's non-offensively black. This is not to say that there aren't black girls like this but the relationship would have been more authentic to me had her character been at least a little bit 'blacker' (and, no, I don't mean ghetto).

Second, Percy Jones reminded me of my own dad and I couldn't help but think about what the Diva Dad would have done in a similar situation. For example, Simon eventually ends up sleeping in the basement. The truth of the matter is that he never would have been sharing a bed with Theresa in the first place, not even for a minute. Despite coming from a close-knit family, there were times when I wondered whether Theresa really knew her father at all. I mean, come one, she would have had to have known that her dad wouldn't be thrilled with Simon (at least initially). Her little Pollyanna, "race-doesn't-matter" color-blind philosophy was not going to fly with him. Even if she elected not to tell her parents upfront about him, she should have at least warned Simon a bit for what he should expect. Those little implausibilities kept coming up for me. I had more time to think about them during the last third of the movie which dragged a bit as the movie traded the laughs for the lovey-dovey sentimental resolution.

But social commentary aside, Guess Who has just enough charm and enough laughs to make it a pleasant afternoon at the movies. But I'd definitely make it a matinee.