Starring Bernie Mac, Ashton Kutcher, Zoe Saldana, and Judith Scott. Unrated.

With apologies to the great black poet Gil Scott Heron, the revolution may not be televised but sometimes it sure is trivialized.

In the 1967 drama Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, director Stanley Kramer explored race relations in terms of family relations when a black man visits the home of his white girlfriend. Now comes Guess Who, the new comedy from Barbershop 2 director Kevin Rodney Sullivan, which purports to further explore-and, presumably, update-that theme in reverse. Way back in '67, however, interracial marriage was still illegal in some U.S. states, and the idea of a white girl bringing home a black man to her upper-middle-class white parents set off a scandal. Perhaps we really have come a long way since the civil-rights marches of the '60s, because today's version is a comedy.

What's more, Sullivan's comedy isn't really all that controversial. The promised racial tension in Guess Who is a red herring; the film is ultimately a pleasant Meet the Parents-style situation comedy dressed as political content.

And it's actually a pretty funny film.

Thankfully, Ashton Kutcher brings a much-appreciated understatement to the role of the hapless white fish out of water, Simon, while Zoe Saldana is believable as his girlfriend-of-colour, Theresa. Saldana is a strong actor and insinuates herself into the story more integrally than, say, Teri Polo in Meet the Parents.

But the key to the movie is Bernie Mac. As family patriarch Percy, Mac stays within his comic comfort zone: all bulging eyes and mumbling anger. This approach, however formulaic, actually works for the material, especially with Kutcher as his foil. Mac and Kutcher have a surprising on-screen chemistry and Sullivan never lets the pace get tiresome, keeping the requisite tension intact throughout.

Guess Who contains little social commentary that hasn't been seen before. In fact, it owes a lot to the recent Adam Sandler vehicle Spanglish, since both films dance around their political subtext yet never risk alienating a broader audience by going too deep.

If the revolution has indeed become a sitcom, the real question isn't "Guess who?" but "Can Malcolm X in the Middle be that far off?"