Maid in Manhattan

Straight off, a confession: I'm going into this review with a bias. The poster for Maid in Manhattan annoys the living hell out of me. To me, it looks just like the poster to The Wedding Planner, give or take an airbrushed, Muppet-like Matthew McConaughey. How many times is Jennifer Lopez going to strike that exact same pose with her moony eyes gazing skyward and her head cocked wistfully to the side and supported by a hand on chin? Is your neck broken, J.Lo? Head too heavy? You held deep, meaningful conversations with P. Diddy, so your thoughts couldn't be weighing you down. Get a new pose. I'm not buying your cutey-pie act.

And now, the coming attractions (or as they may be, repulsions): The trailer opens with J.Lo arriving for work for another long day of making beds, putting mints on pillows, and playing into longstanding stereotypes as a Puerto Rican maid. The voiceover pipes up: "At Manhattan's Embarrassment Hotel, where the rich and famous can always be seen, it was Marisa Ventura's job to go unnoticed." Okay, the name of the hotel might have been Barriston or Berryford or something, but it sure sounded like "embarrassment." Maybe it's a Freudian slip by the filmmakers. One thing is certain, however: the premise that J.Lo -- pop star, movie star, one of People's 50 Most Beautiful People in the World -- could go unnoticed immediately thrusts Maid In Manhattan alongside The Two Towers for sheer imagination in films set in fantasy realms.

Presently, we meet the very man who won't be letting J.Lo go unnoticed. (Just let the lady do her job, pal. She's got a family to feed.) Ralph Fiennes -- or R.Fi to his legions of pop fans -- is a slick-looking senatorial candidate presumably running on a ticket supporting oil drilling in Alaskan wildlife preserves in order to procure hair oil for millionaire playboys. Even J.Lo's son, whom Fiennes meets in the hotel elevator, knows he's running for the Senate. We have either one famous candidate, or the most politically in-touch ten-year-old since Missy Gold was on Benson.

One of the perks -- or fun ways of risking termination -- of being a maid in a five-star hotel apparently involves trying on the guests' opulent designer clothing (another perk seems to be catching guests naked and making small-dick jokes at their expense). Urban legends as I've heard them attest that the housecleaning staff gets up to other, far less innocent monkeyshines as well. Wouldn't it have been a much more intriguing teaser if Fiennes had met J.Lo in the process of inserting guests' toothbrushes into her famous posterior and using their cameras to take pictures of the act, ensuring their discovery of this horrifying fact when they develop their vacation photos? But, as it happens, he merely bumps into her while she's looking utterly fabulous in a guest's borrowed outfit, mistakes her for a wealthy socialite, and instantly falls in love.

Fiennes also loves J.Lo's son, since he's obviously some sort of Junior Republican, and the two have plans to take the candidate's dog for a walk. He invites her to come -- if her husband doesn't mind, he adds coyly, exuding charm and, judging from the scene, entire liters of viscous natural oils. "She doesn't have a husband," says her helpful son. "I don't have a husband," says J.Lo. But before Fiennes can say "You don't have a husband?" we cut to the park, the director having the sense to leave it still somewhat ambiguous whether or not she has a husband. The two become smitten (J.Lo and R.Fi, that is -- the child is nowhere to be seen. Maybe they ditched him somewhere in the park. Three's a crowd, you know?) Paparazzi snap pictures that end up on tabloid covers with the headline "Dog Day Afternoon", prompting Al Pacino to get on the phone with his lawyer.

Elsewhere, Fiennes sits in the backseat of a car with a business associate, who is kind enough not to mention the damp glutenous patch Fiennes' hair is leaving on the upholstery. "She's not like anyone I've ever met!" raves Fiennes. "She's not a phony!" Off-camera, an unseen hand puts a tick in the "Dramatic Irony" box on the Mistaken Identity Romantic Comedy checklist. J.Lo knows otherwise, however, and panics as the situation gets out of control.

She hides from him even while forced to serve him (giving her a chance for some mild physical comedy), but Fiennes gets investigators to track her down, and she's eventually forced into attending a gala event with him, looking so-over-the-top stunning in a ballgown-of-dubious-origin I had to watch the trailer three times to be sure she wasn't wearing a tiara. (Apparently the investigators glossed over the whole part about J.Lo being a poor maid when passing along the news to Fiennes of her whereabouts. You have to give really specific instructions with those guys.) "This can't go past tonight," she warns him.

"Then you shouldn't have worn that dress," he replies, and he's right -- she shouldn't be wearing other people's clothing. But she did and we know she'll be rewarded for it in the end.

Does she deserve a happy ending to this Cinderella story? About as much as Cinderella did, really. The trailer takes the right amount of care to paint her as honest and even guilt-ridden, instead of a social climber or gold-digger. It's a lot easier to root for Melanie Griffith's smart, hardworking, equally duplicitous, but utterly deserving Tess in Working Girl, though.

The casting of Ralph Fiennes in the role of the love interest/meal ticket is a little troubling, because of the message it seems to send: The way out of poverty and drudgery for a minority woman is to hitch herself to the White Man. Plus, I can never tell Ralph Fiennes apart from Liam Neeson. Look at them side by side; they're the same guy. So to me, at least, it looks like our downtrodden Latina maid is pairing herself up with millionaire industrialist Oskar Schindler. It's alarming that Schindler'd take this role as his follow-up to Schindler's List. After that tour de force, talk about slumming.

Of course, it's all completely inoffensive as long as you turn your brain off, and why wouldn't you? You won't need to use it, since you know from the get-go exactly how the movie's going to play out. Predictability is a weakness of romantic comedies in general, justifying a four-Billy-Crystal ceiling across the board, but this one is no worse than the rest. I'm also establishing a rule here and now that the presence of a cute kid in a trailer automatically justifies the deduction of one Billy Crystal simply because most of them wind up being irritating to the point of intolerability over the course of ninety minutes.

But the trailer for Maid In Manhattan does what it's supposed to do. It tells you there's a new romantic comedy out that you can go see on a date during this holiday season. If you're the sort of girl who's into this kind of thing (and there must be a lot of you, or how the hell do Jennifer Lopez movies keep making money?), you'll probably enjoy it. If you're among the section of the populace not at all interested in seeing this, (i.e. most guys), you can at least enjoy looking at J.Lo and fantasizing about beating up Ben Affleck. No pressure.

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