"Maid in Manhattan" is not dumb; the Kevin Wade screenplay deals with several story lines and makes them all interesting. And Jennifer Lopez and Ralph Fiennes make an intriguing couple because their characters have ways of passing the time other than falling in love. (I grow impatient when movie characters are so limited they can think of nothing better to do than follow the plot.) Lopez plays Marisa Ventura, a maid in a posh Manhattan hotel. She has a bright grade-schooler named Ty (Tyler Garcia Posey) who for reasons of his own has become an expert on Richard M. Nixon. Marisa hopes to be promoted to management one day, but despite the nudging of fellow maid and best friend Stephanie (Marissa Matrone), is hesitant about applying.
Fiennes plays Christopher Marshall, a Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate. Camera crews and herds of paparazzi follow him everywhere, perhaps under the impression that he is Rudolph Giuliani. He has a personal assistant named Jerry (Stanley Tucci) whose job is to advise him not to do almost everything that he thinks of doing.
The movie uses the device of a hotel staff briefing to fill us in on various VIP guests, including an exhibitionist, two sticky-fingered French ladies, and especially Caroline (Natasha Richardson), a flighty airhead from Sotheby's who has checked into an expensive suite. Future senator Marshall has checked into another one.
And then, in a dazzling display of time-honored movie developments, writer Wade and director Wayne Wang arrange for Marisa to be trying on one of Caroline's expensive dresses just as her son meets Marshall and talks them all into walking the senatorial dog in Central Park. Marshall understandably thinks this impostor is the inhabitant of the other suite (Richardson). Prince Charming of course falls instantly in love with Cinderella, who must race back to the hotel and resume her life of scrubbing and bed-making. Marshall, meanwhile, invites the inhabitant of the expensive suite to lunch, only to find that it is the real Caroline, not the mistaken one.
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