Tina Majorino gives awkward outsiders a welcome lack of fuss. We rate her as an understated ensemble player: in Napoleon Dynamite, she helps make a group worth spending time with, though she cannot solve its wandering story.
Fi1m perspective
Deb does not have to compete with Napoleon’s oddness to make an impression in Napoleon Dynamite (2004). Tina Majorino’s understatement suits Jared Hess’s high-school comedy, which needs its supporting players whenever the jokes begin to stall. The screenplay by Hess and Jerusha Hess is strongest in small encounters, where Deb and Efren Ramirez’s Pedro Sanchez relieve Napoleon of having to supply every comic variation. We grew fond of their company because those encounters gave us time to get to know the characters between laughs. Majorino suits that patient approach, although patience is something the film occasionally asks for without earning it.
Her early screen work placed her in rather different circumstances. As a child actor, she played Molly Singer in Corrina, Corrina (1994) and Enola in Waterworld (1995), opposite Kevin Costner in the latter. Those years often put her characters through family crises or other dramatic upheavals. After a break from 1999 to 2004, she returned as Deb, with the smaller social difficulties of an outsider comedy taking the place of those large events.
Television then gave her a sustained place in ensembles, including Veronica Mars (2004–2007) and Big Love (2006–2011). Rob Thomas created the part of Cindy ‘Mac’ Mackenzie specifically for her in Veronica Mars, and she reprised it in the 2014 film. The computer expert fits a recurring pattern in Majorino’s casting, which favours intelligent, technically capable or socially awkward outsiders. Such parts make sense for an actor whose appeal as Deb comes from not overplaying the awkwardness. The risk is that we recognise the type before we notice what she is doing with it.
These are often supporting parts, and it would be a mistake to treat that as a failing. In Napoleon Dynamite, sharing the comic work with Ramirez is precisely what Majorino does well, and the film needs them both as its shortage of story becomes harder to ignore. Deb cannot keep every awkward encounter from dragging, but her presence remains one of the reasons to forgive the film its aimlessness. Start there if a high-school comedy with time to spare for its outsiders sounds like a good evening.
Biography
Tina Majorino is an American actress. Born on 7 February 1985 in Westlake Village, California, she began her career as a child actor in the 1990s.
Her early film roles include When a Man Loves a Woman (1994), Corrina, Corrina (1994), Andre (1994) and Waterworld (1995). She left acting in 1999 and returned in 2004 as Deb in Napoleon Dynamite.
Subsequent credits include the role of Cindy 'Mac' Mackenzie in Veronica Mars (2004–2007, 2014), appearances in Big Love and Grey's Anatomy, and a voice role as Deb in the 2012 animated series Napoleon Dynamite.
