I didn't like Maid in Manhattan the first time I saw it when it was called Pretty Woman, and I sure as hell don't like it now.  Actually, without knowing about the Pretty Woman plot knockoff, or that Jenny from the Block is the star, Manhattan's credits actually read like a highbrow arthouse picture.  Wayne Wang directing Ralph Fiennes, Bob Hoskins and Natasha Richardson?  Sounds like some stuffy British production that would bore the socks off its viewers.

Well, Manhattan is actually boring enough to blow off your socks.  The same people who got that warm, fuzzy feeling in their tummies from Sweet Home Alabama will be right at home here.  But I have a feeling those folks would be just as entertained if you sat in their living room, dimmed the lights and waved a flashlight around on the ceiling for 90 minutes.  They'd probably applaud when you were done, too – the nincompoops at my screening of Manhattan did.  In all fairness, though, I think some of them clapped just because they wanted the lights to come on.  After all, that's how things work back at their trailers.

Lopez (Enough) plays Marisa Ventura, a chambermaid at a five-star Manhattan hotel who has both a strong work ethic and a precocious '70s-obsessed son (Tyler Garcia Posey).  Her days are spent dealing with snooty hotel guests (read: white people who look down their surgically altered noses at her) with a grin-and-bear-it attitude, while evenings are...well, we never see what Marisa does outside the hotel.

One day, a co-worker named Stephanie (Marissa Matrone) talks Marisa into trying on a designer outfit that belongs to the bitchy denizen of the hotel's Park Suite (Richardson, Blow Dry).  While decked out in the expensive threads, Marisa is accidentally spotted by Christopher Marshall (Fiennes, Red Dragon), a Kennedy-esque State Assemblyman running for US Senate. Because she's dressed nicely and is in one of the hotel's best suites, he assumes she's an upper-class piece of tail and begins pursuit.  Because she's such an honest soul, Marisa never lies to Marshall, but she never makes it clear she scrubs toilets for a living, either.

The rest of the film is as predictable as you can get, but it's also the second December release (along with Empire) to give viewers the message that all white people are either racists, thieves, or worse.  The only thing remotely interesting or different in Manhattan is that each of the two lovebirds is trying to obtain some difficult goal, albeit quite reluctantly (Marisa: a management position; Marshall: an election victory).  And each has a sidekick more interested than they are in attaining said goal (Marisa: Stephanie; Marshall: his campaign manager, played by Stanley Tucci).

How refreshing it would it have been if, upon learning Marisa was a lowly Latina maid, Marshall squealed, "Eeewwwwwww!" and did the pee-pee dance while shaking his hands in an attempt to get all the yuck off?  Well, that's kind of what I felt like doing as I was watching this mess.  Fiennes makes the most of his role, but there's only so much you can do with a no-talent like Lopez ruining any chemistry he tried to muster.  It's probably the best work Lopez has done on the screen (in a lead role, anyway), but it's still not even mediocre.

1:45 -

for some language/sexual references