Marisa
Ventura (Jennifer Lopez) is a down-to-earth girl working as a
maid in a swanky Manhattan hotel. She’s good at her job and
knows it. Whether it is keeping the other maids in line –
particularly her obnoxious friend Stephanie (Marrisa Matrone) –
or helping an intensely superficial and rich guest (Natasha
Richardson) decide on the best outfit for a big date, Marisa is
a girl that knows how to keep all her ducks in a row.
While
packing up some of the wealthy resident’s clothes to return to
the boutique for her, Stephanie convinces Marisa to try on the
Dolce suit before taking it back. It is at that moment her son
Ty (Tyler Posey) walks in with a gentleman he’s met in the
elevator, wanting to know if it would be alright if he could go
walk the man’s dog for him in Central Park. This man just
happens to be Christopher Marshall (Ralph Fiennes), a charmingly
handsome politico thinking of making a run for a New York
congressional seat. Assuming the nattily dressed woman is the
suite’s resident, Marshall asks the star struck Marisa if she’d
like to join them on the walk.
And so
begins the Cinderella tale Maid in Manhattan, a movie so
wafer-thin it is almost transparent. The plotting is pedestrian
at best, you know where it is going from the first frame and
there isn’t anything going on that should hold your attention
for any more than a few seconds. Even so, I never minded this
movie while I sat there, and at certain times I even found
myself downright enjoying it immensely.
The credit
for that goes directly to Lopez and a game-supporting cast. She
carries Maid in Manhattan with a fresh ease and vitality
that’s really something. The camera loves her and the
multi-talented artist is in her element with this tale. Then,
anything would be an improvement over the starlet’s last two
films, the anemic Enough
and the spectacularly awful The Wedding Planner.
It’s hard
not to wish Lopez would flex her acting muscles and startle us
with a performance much like she did in Steven Soderbergh’s
Out of Sight in 1998, but it seems those days are long
behind her now. But with more than able support from Matrone,
Posey, Richardson, Amy Sedaris and an excellent Bob Hoskins
(playing the hotel’s chief butler), Maid in Manhattan is
never less than watchable.
Not that
something like that really should account for much, and there is
plenty about the movie I can take issue with. For one thing,
Fiennes looks bored as the attractive Marshall. Obviously
slumming and trying to do something lighter than his usual
serious (Schindler’s List, The End of the Affair, Sunshine)
work, the usually reliable actor sleepwalks through the film, as
if realizing how flat the whole affair really is. One can easily
imagine an actor such as Hugh Jackman having much more fun in
such an ordinary picture, probably elevating the role to richer
heights than it would deserve.
But the
real culprit for everything wrong with Maid in Manhattan
is writer Kevin Wade. Working from a story originally conceived
by Home Alone and Pretty in Pink vet John Hughes
(writing under the pseudonym Edmond Dantes), Wade’s screenplay
reeks of familiarity. In fact, I loved this movie the first time
I saw it in 1988 when it was called Working Girl and
starred Harrison Ford, Sigourney Weaver and Melanie Griffith.
But then, why should that be a revelation? Wade wrote that film
too, so to find him cribbing from his own great – and Oscar
nominated – hit is hardly surprising.
Still, I
was never particularly annoyed by any of this while I was
actually watching Maid in Manhattan. It’s not so much a
bad film as it is one that evaporates as soon as you stand up
from your seat. With so many movies disintegrating well before
then, I guess I can’t be too angry with one that at least waits
to do so until I’ve reached my car.
