Review: Documentary gives Rita Moreno, EGOT-winning icon and Hollywood survivor, the profile she's always deserved

A filmmaker would have to go out of their way to botch a documentary about someone as lively, and with as long and as storied a career, as Rita Moreno.

Thankfully, director Mariem Pérez Riera does a beautiful job of profiling the 89-year-old Hollywood legend and survivor, mostly by letting Moreno herself do the majority of the talking.

Moreno is game to talk about a lot of her life: Her childhood in Puerto Rico during the Depression, moving with her mother to New York when she was 5, becoming a performer, dressing up like Elizabeth Taylor to impress Louis B. Mayer and get her first studio contract. And that’s just the beginning.

Moreno talks candidly about being typecast in “native girl” roles, wearing “makeup the color of mud” to play Pacific Islanders, Native Americans and, in “The King and I,” a Thai maiden. She also talks about the leering, harassment and abuse at the hands of the men who ran Hollywood, including being raped by her own agent.

Through all the bad material, there were some gems: Roles in ‘Singin’ in the Rain” (as the flashy flapper Zelda) and her Oscar-winning performance in Anita in “West Side Story.” Pérez Riera interviews scholars and many famous names — including Eva Longoria, Gloria Estefan and Lin-Manuel Miranda — to dissect the cultural significance of Anita, and Moreno’s surprise Oscar win for the role. 

Moreno also talks candidly about her tempestuous relationship with Marlon Brando, and several tragedies that accompanied it. And she talks about how, after her Oscar win, she turned down the “native girl” roles and ended up not making another movie for seven years. Instead, she went to Broadway, winning a Tony for Terrence McNally’s “The Ritz.” She also worked on the children’s TV series “The Electric Company” (the album for which got her a Grammy), and a classic appearance on “The Muppet Show,” for which she won her first Emmy — completing her EGOT trophy case.

Moreno has never stopped working, though it seems like every 20 years, she lands a “comeback” role — as a nun counseling inmates on “Oz” in the ‘90s, and most recently as the flamboyant grandma on the reboot of “One Day at a Time.” 

(Update: It speaks to Moreno’s longevity, and her importance as a trailblazer, that she can still court controversy — as she did this week when she appeared on “Late Show With Stephen Colbert” and defended Miranda over complaints that the movie of his musical “in the Heights” didn’t show enough representation of the Afro-Latinx community. Moreno followed up the next day by tweeting that “I’m incredibly disappointed with myself” for being “clearly dismissive of Black lives that matter in our Latin community.” Moreno then praised Miranda’s “sensitivity and resolve to be more inclusive of the Afro-Latino community going forward,” and added, “see, you CAN teach this old dog new tricks.”)

Pérez Riera (whose son played the teen grandson on “One Day at a Time”) assembles a raft of movie clips and archival footage, as well as interviews with friends, colleagues and historians who put the work into context. But the strength of the film is Moreno herself, who in her 80s is still the attention seeker and truth teller she says she’s been since she was a little girl.

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‘Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided to Go For It’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, June 18, at Century 16 (South Salt Lake) and Megaplex Jordan Commons (Sandy). Rated PG-13 for mature thematic content, some strong language including a sexual reference, and suggestive material. Running time: 90 minutes.

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This review originally appeared on this site on January 31, 2021, when the film premiered at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival.