Review: Documentary sheds light on Rita Moreno’s career — and recent ‘In the Heights’ remarks

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With few parts of substance coming her way, Moreno pushed ahead in role after dull, demeaning role, smiling and cajoling and pouting and seducing, getting spanked in “The Vagabond King” and tumbling to her death in “Seven Cities of Gold.” She had a blast as the flashy B-lister Zelda Zanders in “Singin’ in the Rain,” one of the few pictures of the era that didn’t exploit or otherize her.

Whether or not that charge holds water, her comments were illuminating of a larger problem, namely the unfair representational burden shouldered by any major Hollywood production that, like “In the Heights,” is being presented as an overdue corrective.

What seems clear from both the “Late Show” incident and this documentary is, for better or worse, Moreno’s apparent guilelessness, her embodiment of what looks and sounds an awful lot like candor.

She knew she wanted to perform during her early childhood in Humacao, Puerto Rico, a desire that bore fruit after little “Rosita,” as she was nicknamed, moved with her mother to New York City in 1936.

One of the delights of “Just a Girl Who Decided to Go for It” — a subtitle whose explanation perfectly captures her giddy, unpretentious ease in the spotlight — is the sight of Moreno now living and for the most part working as she pleases.

And she’ll be back on the big screen later this year in Steven Spielberg’s remake of “West Side Story,” which, good, bad or in between, will likely stand as a bittersweet marker: a reminder of the gap between the extraordinary career she’s had and the one she was denied.

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