August 12, 1994

CORRINA, CORRINA is a nice comedy-drama that deals with grief, love and some heavy race and class issues in a very light, warm-hearted sort of way. Is that bad? We can talk about it later.

Manny Singer (Ray Liotta between NO ESCAPE and OPERATION DUMBO DROP) is a recently widowed jingle writer in suburban Los Angeles, 1959. His 9-year-old daughter Molly (Tina Majorino, also in the seal movie ANDRE this summer – sorry, I had to skip a few things) is so not-over-it she refuses to speak, but he’s gonna be screwed if he doesn’t return to work, so he looks for a housekeeper/nanny to stay home with her. After some misfires he ends up with Corrina Washington (Whoopi Goldberg, also in THE LION KING and [briefly] THE LITTLE RASCALS this summer), who seems cynical at first but of course forms an adorable bond with the kid.

In 1994 I wasn’t interested in things this cutesy, and never considered watching it. Now I’m a middle-aged cornball, so I found it moving to see Whoopi turn that little girl’s cartoonish pout into a giggle. Majorino has a pitch perfect deadpan for the non-speaking portions and then a timid little mouse voice when she does talk (spoiler). She breaks your heart when she lays in the grass with her dead mom’s dress laid out next to her, one hand in its pocket, or when Manny lies to a deliveryman that Mrs. Singer is in the bath tub and she lights up and runs to the bathroom to see her. Damn, Manny. What a fuck up. So then you’re primed for the opposite emotion when she notices her dad slipping and referring to Corrina as “your mother” and she doesn’t point it out but breaks into a huge, toothy grin.

There’s a religious message, which is not my thing, but it’s fine. Manny asks Corrina to stop telling Molly her mom is in heaven, because they’re atheists. But when he tells Molly Heaven is something people made up in order to feel less sad she asks “What’s wrong with that?” and it’s hard to argue with her there. Seems like she’s going in clear-eyed. Corrina also brings her to church, but it seems to be more about the singing than the religious teachings (since we never see any of those).

It’s very SISTER ACT adjacent because Corrina is into music, often surprising Manny with her knowledge and taste, and making a connection to Molly through singing with her. Manny and Corrina both have the same favorite song (“You Go to My Head”), though Manny thinks the Louis Armstrong version is the best and Corrina prefers Billie Holiday’s. After impressing him with her description of Bill Evans she reveals a dream of writing liner notes for records. And she ends up helping him with his work.

But to make a living she has to do this and other cleaning jobs while sharing a house with her sister Jevina (Jenifer Lewis, last seen in RENAISSANCE MAN) and her family. Molly spends time with them and becomes great friends with her nieces Lizzie (Briahnna Odom) and Mavis (Ashley Taylor Walls) and nephew Percy (Curtis Williams, “Little Kid” from BEVERLY HILLS COP III), all funny, natural kid performances. And Molly gets a break from white kids after she’s bullied in her all white school for drawing Corrina in her family portrait. She’s so miserable Corrina lets her skip school and takes her with her on cleaning gigs.

I can’t deny there’s some naivete to this “can’t we all just be color blind?” message. There’s a provocative scene where Molly accidentally causes a racial incident in the middle of the Baptist children’s choir by declaring herself a [racist slur I’m not gonna type] lover (she heard a bigot call her dad that for taking Corrina out to dinner). I can imagine some people would be aghast at the scene, but I confess I think it’s pretty effective in showing how alien this shit is to kids who just love their friends and haven’t been soured by adults’ stupid opinions about race.

Manny and Corrina don’t seem to realize there’s a chemistry between them, but they definitely don’t go for the other options their people are trying to set them up with. Corrina completely brushes off Anthony (Steven Williams from 21 Jump Street and JASON GOES TO HELL) while Manny awkwardly dodges advances from pearl-necklace-wearing widow Jenny. Wendy Crewson (MAZES AND MONSTERS) is really great in the role – she’s very pretty and openly hot for Manny, but also makes a really funny horrible-white-lady character. Molly is unimpressed by Jenny’s uptight piano recital and I know she objects to the eyes that lady’s making at her dad, but I think it’s also because she’s been going to Black jazz clubs and churches with Corrina and singing “Pennies From Heaven” with her. She’s too advanced for this shit.

Crewson plays it just slightly unhinged, not too broad, and then we get to say “I knew it!” when she finally meets Corrina, acts condescending to her and calls her “Katrina.” (She’s later even worse to a white servant, but I’m gonna guess she’s racist as well as classist.)

It does ultimately turn into a romance, dealing lightly with the issues that brings up. A horrible neighbor lady suspects interracial relationship and narcs him out to his mom (Erica Yohn, Madam Ruby from PEE-WEE’S BIG ADVENTURE), who comes at him with an “I’m not racist but society is racist so it will be too hard for you and you shouldn’t do it” angle. You could say there’s a both-sidesism in the way it intercuts between them dealing with the objections of their families, but I think the arguments are weighted a little differently. Jevina’s issue is a reasonable suspicion that “that white man” is exploiting her, because she keeps staying hours past her shift to have dinner with them but she’s not being paid overtime.

Which is the other issue their relationship brings up, which is very complex and intertwined with the other one. To me the great tension of their impending romance is about the fact that she works for him. Writer/director Jessie Nelson leavens the racial discomfort of the subservience by having all the other applicants for the job be white, so Corrina’s established not as the Black maid, but the maid who happens to be Black. Still, they’re falling in love while he’s paying her to make dinner and take care of his daughter? That’s not a good situation. But also she needs a job. In the end it’s sort of resolved by accident without having to face it, but it doesn’t feel all wrapped up in a bow or exactly set in stone that it’s happily ever after. It’s just a hopeful start.

One way they stay true to the period is by having both Manny and Corrina constantly smoking. It’s tempting to say they wouldn’t do that now, but it’s crucial to the plot because Molly hears something on TV about cigarettes causing cancer and starts hiding them from him.

Being a period piece gives it a slight air of “this is more important than other movies where a comedian comes into the life of a sad kid,” but also it’s just more visually pleasing on account of all the hairstyles, sweaters and furniture (especially at the homes of rich advertising people). It doesn’t hurt that it’s shot by Bruce Surtrees (DIRTY HARRY, THE OUTFIT, RISKY BUSINESS) and looks like A Real Movie.

The time period also aligns it with the summer of ’94’s boomer nostalgia theme – Manny is working on a Mr. Potato Head ad for work, and there’s a big scene about hula hooping – but it’s more about things being worse then than about it being the good old days. Part of me questions a movie set at this time that treats this subject with only one openly racist confrontation and no other consequences. I wasn’t alive then but I’ve seen that movie LOVING, the true story of how hard an interracial couple had to fight to be left alone all the way in 1967. I looked it up, and California made interracial marriage legal in 1948, but that didn’t stop Sammy Davis Jr. from getting harassed and threatened for dating, marrying, and playing a character who dated a white woman. At one point he paid a Black woman to marry him for less than a year just to get racists off his ass for a while. So in a certain sense this is white washing the history here.

But also I think not every movie has to be traumatic and harsh just because the world is, and I appreciate this as a sweet story about a couple and a little girl, with some laughs and some gentle points about the value of a multi-cultural existence and the things we can share through music. Goldberg is as good as in SISTER ACT but in a movie that’s corny in a different way I find more appealing, it’s a treat to see Liotta using his sad eyes to just play a nice guy, and Majorino is about as natural of a kid actor as you could have in something like this. It all works.

Only after writing the above did I check to see what people said at the time. Reviews seem to have been pretty negative. Roger Ebert gave it a fair 2 1/2 star review, writing that it “has its heart in the right place” but “the whole movie seems kind of muted” and “it seems almost as shy as the characters about the charged issues of race and romance.” He also thought the movie was too gloomy, which I guess is where I differ from him. I like the way it uses an underlying sadness to turn into something nice.

Joan Cusack (ADDAMS FAMILY VALUES) gets some laughs briefly appearing as a nanny who’s not going to work out. New Line Cinema mascot Lin Shaye (last seen in EVEN COWGIRLS GET THE BLUES) has a bit as one of the other candidates for the job. It’s the final role for Don Ameche (COCOON), who plays Manny’s dad, and died before the movie came out. Brent Spiner is seen as an executive at Manny’s job – this was well into Star Trek: The Next Generation and he has a full character name on the credits (Brent Witherspoon) so I gotta assume he had a scene or two cut. Patrika Darbo, who played 66 in previous summer retrospective deep cut LEAVING NORMAL, plays another wacky waitress here.

CORRINA, CORRINA is the feature writing/directing debut of Jessie Nelson, an occasional actress (she was in SO I MARRIED AN AXE MURDERER) and director of the short film To the Moon, Alice, which had Chris Cooper, Lisa Kudrow and Julie Kavner in the cast. Her only directing since than has been I AM SAM (2001), LOVE THE COOPERS (2015), a season 9 episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm, and five episodes of an Apple TV show called Little Voice, which she co-created. She also wrote STEPMOM, THE STORY OF US, BECAUSE I SAID SO and WAITRESS: THE MUSICAL and has a story credit on FRED CLAUS.

The year after this Nelson gave birth to a daughter who she named Molly, just like the character. Grown up Molly Gordon is also an actress (BOOKSMART, GOOD BOYS, SHIVA BABY) and writer/director (THEATER CAMP), but at the moment she may be best known for playing Claire on The Bear.

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Summer of ’94 connections:

Larry Miller plays a less sleazy version of the same best-buddy-at-work-who-invites-him-to-a-party-to-set-him-up-with-his-friend-he-doesn’t-like character he played in DREAM LOVER.

Courtland Mead, who starred in DRAGONWORLD and played Uh-Huh in THE LITTLE RASCALS, has a small part as one of Jenny’s kids. Coincidentally there’s also a scene where Molly and her friends watch an original Little Rascals short (Our Gang Follies of 1938) on TV, get excited and dance around. The scene they’re watching involves Buckwheat tapdancing on stage, so you can read something into it about the kids being too innocent to worry about what has at times been interpreted as a harmful stereotype, or not. Choose your own adventure.