Maid In Manhattan is like a big, fluffy, unmade bed -- and Jennifer Lopez is sleeping in it.
That may sound appealing until you remember that this is a movie. In real life, the only one who is going to be crawling in with her is fiance Ben Affleck. In the movie, it is Ralph Fiennes, and that makes no sense at all.
Lopez, playing a Brooklyn hotel maid with Puerto Rican heritage, and Fiennes, an idealistic American politician who is East Coast upper crust, are set up as an unlikely couple. The whole movie concerns itself with whether these two people will fall in love and be together.
But the plot says the gulf between them is generated by cultural barriers and the pretensions of the ruling class, not by a total absence of sexual, or even on-screen friendship chemistry.
Whoever thought that Lopez and Fiennes would spark the same frisson -- and box-office -- as Julia Roberts and Richard Gere in Pretty Woman was dreaming in Technicolor. This Cinderella shatters her glass slipper. Except for the dazzling gown she wears to a swank event, Lopez looks awful in her wardrobe. And I'm not talking about her maid's outfit. The pricey white pantsuit she wears early on -- the one in which she meets Fiennes and inadvertently fools him into thinking she's wealthy -- looks hideous on her.
As for her acting, Lopez is dull, if competent, in her role as a single mom who is loath to step outside her class milieu. And Fiennes is almost invisible as the man who would risk his political career if he dared to "slum it" with a maid instead of a hottie debutante from high society.
Maid In Manhattan is supposed to be a traditional Hollywood romantic comedy. That in itself is a danger zone. This genre flourished in the golden age of cinema but, in recent years, Hollywood has been sucking the life and the romance and the comedy out of these things.
This movie is an example of what goes wrong, even with good intentions. The story was pitched by writer Edmond Dantes as a contemporary fairytale for Julia Roberts. That original idea was abandoned, but the project was overhauled by Roberts' former agent, Elaine Goldsmith-Thomas.
Lopez got direct input. Hence, the personal touches, such as the Puerto Rican-Brooklyn angle and the "look-at-my-butt" joke. Kevin Wade (Working Girl) wrote the final script. Workmanlike Wayne Wang (Smoke, The Joy Luck Club) was brought in as director, even though he had never done a romantic comedy before.
The strong support cast includes a sterling Bob Hoskins as the hotel butler, sly Stanley Tucci as the political aide, scene-stealing Natasha Richardson as the flaky society gal and a sweet kid, Tyler Garcia Posey, as Lopez's son.
Everyone just ploughed ahead, working hard but never finding the elusive, ephemeral magic that these movies need in order to succeed. Unmade beds don't make themselves, especially in a movie called Maid In Manhattan.
(This film is rated PG)
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