Here's something new and un-welcome: a timid tear-jerker. Whoopi Goldberg plays Corrina Washington, a '50s-era housekeeper who goes to work for Manny Singer (Ray Liotta), a recently widowed jingle writer with a traumatized 8-year-old daughter, Molly (Tina Majorino). Molly has refused to talk since her mother's death. Corrina will set Molly straight with laughs, tears and some old-time religion. Corrina and Dad will then shock the bigoted neighbors and Manny's Jewish parents with an interracial romance. If you think that sounds pretty steamy, think again. Director Jessie Nelson bogs down her semiautobiographical script with muffled emotions and molasses pacing.

Goldberg strains hard to compensate. Her "What's up, girl?" sass has sparked many a movie, and it sure livens up this one. But it's decades ahead of the script's time period, as is Corrina's hip psycho-babble. "Get mad," she tells Molly, encouraging the kid to express her rage at her mother for dying by pounding a punching bag. Manny even joins in. It's the kind of dysfunctional-family fodder you'd expect on Oprah, Phil or Geraldo.

The racial angle is similarly tame. Corrina's ambition to write about music is thwarted by whitey in the publishing world. Manny is called a nigger lover. But there's no grand passion. Nelson allows Corrina and Manny a chaste kiss, that's all. Goldberg and Liotta are two live wires stuck in a virtuous afternoon TV special. Corrina, Corrina is just the same old yadda, yadda.

“Too Close”

Next was formed in Minneapolis when the uncle of Terry "T-Low" and Raphael "Tweety" Brown, who was a gospel choir director, introduced the brothers to Robert Lavelle "R.L." Huggar. Sounds of Blackness singer Ann Nesby groomed the R&B group before handing them over to Naughty by Nature's KayGee, who wrote and produced "Too Close." The idea for the song was sparked "from a conversation we had with several girls at a nightclub," explained T-Low. "It's talking about the club scene, with guys getting out of hand and the female telling him to back up, asking, 'What are you doing?'"