The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

Sidney Poitier made some films that have become largely forgotten over the course of his career. When you've made over 40 films in your initial run, pre-first retirement, then there's naturally going to be some that slip through the cracks. And today it seems hardly anyone talks about Brother John, The Lost Man, Good-bye My Lady or Virgin Island. But what could perhaps be surprising is that the film he made right off the back of his biggest commercial success should be so overlooked today.In 1967 Sidney Poitier was the most successful box office star in the world with three big hits in cinemas. Just one year later and he's only got one release, this stagily-directed semi-farce based on Poitier's own storyline. The main theme sees Poitier play possibly his most dislikeable character, arrogant businessman Jack Parks, match-made against his will with a black maid seeking some form of personal empowerment. The film concludes with a title song, informing us that what that empowerment amounts to is the need for love. That's right... although the film touches on themes of emancipation and black pride over the course of its runtime, it turns out all the titular Ivy needed all along was a good shag. Chief matchmaker Beau Bridges does the best with what he's got as a representative of the 60s counterculture, but his stoner fixations seem today, like the main subtext of the movie, somewhat quaint and parochial; patronising rather than groundbreaking. Look out also for Parks' angered expression when Bridges' characters asks if he's gay, or the confused and confusing monologue from Bridges at the end.However, such flaws are perhaps not always that of the movie; this was the first depiction of a romantic relationship between a black man and woman in mainstream Hollywood, and was quite groundbreaking for its time. It was just four years after this movie that Poitier had a go at directing himself... you do wonder if this was more than a coincidence, as the TV Movie style framing here makes the direction of Guess Who's Coming To Dinner look like the work of Scorcese. Ultimately it's a film that hasn't aged well, and a poor follow-up to his three '67 vehicles... though it may not have been so at the time.

A family tires to match a maid to a trucking company president.The first 15 minutes of the film is painful to watch. But maybe that's the point. I was about to through this disc out of the truck Then I found out Sidney Portier is a trucking company president. So I watched the rest of the movie,painful parts and all. It ended up being a pretty cool movie.Mr Portier ends up with the girl at the end. The racket he came up with was pretty ingenious. The wrighting and acting in this film are pretty good.Hugh Hurd drives the White big rig.Hugh Hurd was a permanent A list actor.Abbey Lincoln and Nan Martin was hot!!Lauri Peters is hot!!---One Truck Drivers Opinion---erldwgstruckermovies.com

Most of the other reviews of this film paint it as whimsical and charming family fare. I didn't see it that way at all. Almost from the opening scene, I was fighting the urge to turn it off. Had it not been a Sidney Poitier, I'd have done just that. The paternalistic attitude of the Lincoln family, especially Abbey Lincoln, is what galls me the most. Even when Ivy tells them what she wants to do, they seem incapable of comprehending that her pursuit of happiness doesn't involve scrubbing their floors for the rest of her life. The preposterous scheme that Tim Lincoln hatches in order to keep her busting up chifferobes down on the Lincoln Plantation for the rest of her life is not merely imbecilic. It's down right malevolent. It brings to mind Matthew McConaughey's closing statements in the movie, "A Time to Kill." Think of what these cretins are really trying to do to Ivy. Consider that they would deny her everything that they themselves cherish. Now, imagine that she's white.Another thing that irked me about this movie was that Abbey Lincoln was, and looked every of, at least 10 years too old to play the part of Ivy, a hard 10 years. Additionally, she had a hard snarling visage that seem to run counter to the ostensible sweetness of the character. At times I half expected her to tell someone that she would cut them. A younger, i.e. age appropriate, actress with a less hard bitten visage would helped me muster up something approximating a suspension of disbelief. And, with the absurd dialog bandied about in this film, especially by Beau Bridges, the suspension of can use all of the help it can get. I'm giving this film a 6 solely on the basis of Sidney Poitier's performance and elegant mien.

I wish they were still making movies like this. The dialog is dated and so is the reaction to the son's marriage proposal to Ivy, but I thoroughly enjoyed this movie. Sidney and Abbey made "acting" look like art. Abbey Lincoln exuded elegance, poise, common sense and a good sense of humor. Sidney is always classy in whatever role he portrays.I liked the Austin family too. They seemed to genuinely care about their housekeeper and seemed ahead of their time in terms of their views on race and class. They really meant well even when they said the wrong thing to Ivy, and didn't seem to realize that she wanted a better life for herself, a home of her own and a family of her own just as they did. Why should she be their "maid" until she died and be satisfied with that? Ivy wanted to pursue American Dream just like all of us do. Even the son who really seemed to care about her was selfish and wanted to trick her into staying under the guise of having her best interests at heart.