by MATTHEW HAYS

The good news about Maid in Manhattan, the new romantic comedy starring Jennifer Lopez, is that it’s not as dire as it looks. The bad news is, it comes pretty damn close.

The Cindarella-esque story is as annoying as it is familiar. Lopez (or “J.Ho” as I cleverly like to refer to her on occasion) is a struggling single mom, a woman who makes her living in the Big Apple by working gruelling shifts as a maid in a chichi upscale hotel. She works hard for the money, and she also has aspirations to move on up into management. One day, in a fit of tomfoolery, she and one of her coworker buddies dress up in a guest’s expensive clothing. At that very minute, Ralph Fiennes, who here plays a rising-star politician, enters the room and mistakes Lopez for one of the highfalutin guests. He shows an interest in her son; the three go for a walk and are captured by the paparazzi, who assume Lopez is his new love interest. Copious predictable mixups ensue.

Taking a film like this at face value is virtually impossible. Though there are numerous obvious points where the movie is attempting to touch on the issue of class and those poor, downtrodden maids, it’s rather hard to swallow when the maid in question is played by a celebrity with money coming out of her ass. Generally, too, the points Lopez allegedly scores for working-class women usually pit her in name-calling standoffs with other women.

This film is aspiring to be another chick-movie box-office blockbuster along the lines of Pretty Woman or Working Girl. What surprises me is that so many women in this target demographic seem to find comfort in films like these. Lord knows, if a movie this bad was aimed at me, I’d be seriously pissed, not pleased. My hope is that women filmgoers everywhere will band together, hunt down anyone and everyone involved in the making of Maid in Manhattan, and bitch slap the living hell out of them. :

Maid in Manhattan opens Friday, Dec. 13

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