Maid in Manhattan. Directed by Wayne Wang. Starring Ralph Fiennes, Jennifer Lopez, Bob Hoskins, Natasha Richardson, Tyler Posey, Stanley Tucci.
J Lo, man! Movies with that in the title: Assassins; Butterfield Eight; Butterflies Are Free; Butt Cassidy and the Sundance Kid; Can-Can; Candide; Candy; Cannonball Run; Cul-de-sac; The Culpepper Cattle Co.; Duff Soup; Duba, Where’s My Car; Fanny; Hind Parts and Coronets; Kiester Morrow Goodbye; Rump Silent, Rump Deep; Sink the Sitzmark; Tuckus: a Man and His Dream; Tush, Tush, Sweet Charlotte.
Wouldn’t even be worth getting sore about a flick this bad if J Lo and that Fiennes guy (I still haven’t figured out how to say his name and mercifully have little enough reason to), capable actors the both of them, didn’t promise by their participation better than we get. A lot better. A lot.
We’ve spaded the ground before, in Working Girl (comely but lower caste secretary Melanie Griffith, bright and spunky, snags dumbo but retrievable rich guy Harrison Ford); in Officer and Gentleman (comely but lower caste bag lady Debra Winger, decent and spunky, snags dumbo but retrievable and soon-to-be-rich avia-toor Richard Gere); in Pretty Woman (comely but lower caste wh escort Julia Roberts, sensitive and spunky, snags dumbo but retrievable rich guy Richard Gere; in Cinderella (comely but lower caste scullery maid, delicate and spunky, snags dumbo but retrievable… aw, saligadoolah mitchigaboolah bibbity bobbity boo). And we just know we’re gonna get a dose of Hollywood Do-bee, one-world, class-war, I-know-better’n-you, nobody’s-better’n-anybody, have-a-nice-day, deprivilege-the-Gringos illumination and the poor schmuck who pulls the short straw (Tucci, Richardson) is gonna have to play the Don’t-bee side of the ticket: you can’t rise above your station; you don’t belong with that guy; she’s one of them, and on and on… So, like, this isn’t just fluff! There’s a message here: Dare to be a… manager! And in case you missed that message, you dummy, Bob Hoskins will deliver it to you via clipped British English in a closeup so tight you can count his pores (an exercise perhaps more inviting to hypothesize than execute, especially with a mouthful of gummi bears) and in words of one syllable: It’s how high you bounce when you hit bottom (okay, okay: “bottom” has two syllables)… Might wanna write that down sommeres, though, like maybe in the back flap of your Portable Plato.
Sooooo... Dumbo but retrievable whitebread Christopher Marshall (Fiennes, sleepwalking through this nightmare) is running for senate in New Jack City when precocious moppet Ty (Tyler Posey) introduces him to his mom, Marisa Ventura (Jennifer Lopez, fetching in high cheekbones and radiant skin, no way around it), smalltime maid in bigtime hotel where Marshall and retinue, notably the smarmy Stanley Tucci as the smarmy Jerry Siegel, smarmy campaign manager, camp. In a fit of hijinx, Marisa has slipped into a Dolce and Garbonzo ensemble (French for “Does this make my hips stick out?”) belonging to grating British rich-bitch Caroline (Natasha Richardson hauling out an over-the-top accent the better to epitomize unappetizing whitebreadery). Kismet: in walks at that very moment Marshall to take her for… well, somebody. They hit it off on a lyrical walk (during which Marshall cures young Ty’s stagefright with a paperclip, trick as old as Demosthenes, who used to orate with a mouthful of paperclips… you can look it up) through Central Park (I guess) till the Dolce outfit turns to pumpkin-tofu-hummus dip and Marisa has to scoot to retrieve her maid’s uniform along with her former identity. Follows a batch of tee-hee misadventures and close calls in which Marisa almost gets caught impersonating somebody until she finally does get caught (on account of the rich-bitch tattles and how she misses getting an éclair down her pants or pushed into a mud-puddle or elevator shaft or some other Hollywood-grade comeuppance for indifference to a drop dead gorgeous ethnic single mom with a gifted urchin in tow, I dunno). We resolve all this with one of those public humiliation press conference thingies where we out ourselves and shout we love her right there in front of God and everybody (America’s Sweethearts, Notting Hill ) and a big in-the-open smoochie where Marisa is rescued from obscurity, poverty, languor, frustration and on and on…
…by dint, be it noted, of her beauty and spunkiness. Gotta ask yourself what would be her (Hollywood) fate if she hadn’t had those traits going for her but rather had been homely and, say, lethargic or just plain old beaten down by things. Then, I’m afraid, she’d be like the lowlifes in About Schmidt and fair prey for cruel Hollywood humor and snide ridicule: check out the treatment of the Swiss family Gink in that flick and compare. Anyhow. I love J Lo, think she stole Out of Sight, where she didn’t play ethnic, just human… and hot! Seems as is she’s big enough star these days to do better on scripts. And speaking of “big enough,” let me say that my favorite is the black spandex capris. Watch for them.