MADE IN AMERICA. Directed by Richard Benjamin; written by Holly Goldberg Sloan. produced by Arnon Milehan, Michael Douglas and Riek Bieber for Warner Bros. Starring Whoopi Goldberg, Ted Danson and Nia Long. Rated PG.
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Made in America is about half of a really good comedy (well, maybe a little more than half) and half a so-so melodrama. It's too bad that the comic pace of the first hour couldn't have kept going into the second.
The movie's premise, clever and provocative as it is, probably has something to do with this, since it contains the potential for both laughter and pathos.
While doing a blood-typing exercise in biology lab, Zora (Long) discovers that she has a blood type incompatible with either of her parents. Since her father died before she was born, she can only confront her mother Sarah (Goldberg), who admits she was artificially inseminated from a sperm bank.
Determined to find her biological father, Zora, along with her friend Tea Cake (Will Smith, who provides some of the movie's best laughs) raids the sperm bank's computer and gets the name of her supposed father.
Now Sarah is a woman who revels in her blackness (in my younger days she would have been called a Black Militant) and has raised Zora this way. So neither one is ready for the revelation that the sperm donor/father is a white guy, Hal Jackson (Danson), and not a very appealing white guy, at that. He's a used car salesman who makes obnoxious TV commercials with animals.
The potential for satiric comedy in this set of circumstances is obvious, and Made in America makes the most of it—for a while. Sarah's reactions to the sperm bank's "mistake," and Hal's work on his animal commercials—while also dodging hysterical females—lets Goldberg and Danson show off what they do best. And that's broad comedy that's mostly verbal but with first-rate physical accents.
Unfortunately, though, the story can't let them continue in this vein, and when they become attracted to one another, the action slows down and the laughs dwindle, and then disappear. What we're left with is a somewhat touching, but mostly hokey "relationships" story for the ending of the movie.
Fans of Danson and Goldberg will be happy with Made in America on the strength of the first half alone. And the supporting cast is good enough to keep up with the leads. But they're all let down by the story in the end.
June 9, 1993