Made in America

Sarah Mathews runs an African-American goods store in Oakland and has raised her teenage daughter Zora on her own, having turned to a sperm bank after being widowed. Zora, now seventeen, learns through a blood test that the man she took for her father was not her biological one, and she sets out to find the donor. Her search leads her to Hal Jackson, a white used-car dealer whose personality and background could hardly differ more from her own. Sarah wants him kept away from her daughter, while Zora is determined to get to know him, and the three have to work out how to deal with the situation.

Richard Benjamin directed the comedy, the eighth film in the directing career he began with My Favorite Year in 1982 and continued through such titles as The Money Pit, Mermaids and Downtown before this one. Whoopi Goldberg plays Sarah, Ted Danson is Hal, and Nia Long appears as Zora, with Will Smith as Tea Cake Walters, Paul Rodríguez and Jennifer Tilly among the supporting cast. Marcia Brandwynne, Nadine Schiff and Holly Goldberg Sloan wrote the screenplay, and Arnon Milchan, Michael Douglas and Rick Bieber produced.

Made on a budget of 22 million dollars, the film took about 105 million dollars worldwide, a strong return. Audiences were lukewarm: on IMDb it holds 5.1 out of 10 from around 19,000 votes, and on TMDB 5.5 out of 10 from roughly 400 votes. A critics' rating of 4.5 out of 10 from 31 reviews places it below even those modest audience scores.