Maid in Manhattan film review

certificate_PG

MAID IN MANHATTAN

As at least one American President learned to his cost, politics and beautiful women are unhappy bedfellows. It's certainly true of Maid In Manhattan, a light and frothy romantic comedy about an aspiring US senator who hits the campaign trail and promptly falls in love with a girl from the wrong side of the tracks.

It's fair to say, given how unappealing the leads are in this picture, that he falls in love with the wrong girl, full stop.

Marisa Ventura (Jennifer Lopez) is a feisty single mother struggling to raise her young son Ty (Tyler Garcia Posey) in the Bronx. She pays the rent by working as a maid at one of Manhattan's swankiest five star hotels, where she is a valued employee - popular with the staff and head butler Lionel (Bob Hoskins), and ear-marked for promotion to Head Of Housekeeping.

During a moment's weakness with her fellow maids, Marisa tries on a $2000 Chanel trouser suit owned by snooty VIP, Caroline Lane (Natasha Richardson), and is caught in the act by Republican candidate Chris Marshall (Ralph Fiennes), who takes the beautiful young woman to be the occupant of the room. Sparks of attraction fly and Chris invites Marisa out for a walk in Central Park, where the two are photographed by the paparazzi, desperate for any crumbs of gossip on the Republican golden boy.

Thankfully, Marisa's face is obscured in the newspaper articles that follow, so her deception goes by unnoticed - apart from having to hide every time Chris walks round the hotel, in case he sees her in her maids outfit. Will Chris still love Marisa when he discovers that she is an impostor? No prizes for guessing 'yes'.

Maid In Manhattan is as predictable as it is unlikely, recycling the Cinderella fairy-tale with a contemporary twist. The film-makers try hard to tarnish Lopez's glitzy public image, even going so far (rather amusingly) to douse all of the hotel maid's uniforms with unsightly sweat patches, as if to emphasize how hard they toil.

The key ingredient of any rom-com has to be chemistry between the lead actors. Unfortunately, if Marisa and Chris are really supposed to be in love, nobody told Lopez and Fiennes: they stare at each other with little more than mild interest; certainly not the all-consuming passion that we're supposed to believe drives their characters together.