Maid In Manhattan

Single mom Jennifer Lopez meets and romances a handsome politician (Ralph Fiennes) who thinks she’s one of the guests at the ritzy hotel where he’s staying, though she’s actually one of the chambermaids there. Lopez is sympathetic and appealing, but Fiennes makes a rather stiff and chilly romantic lead. Then again, even Cary Grant would have trouble bringing any conviction to Kevin Wade’s script (from John Hughes’ story). This is the kind of movie in which girlfriends high-five each other while dancing and singing to songs that are on the soundtrack and in which Lopez’s adolescent son (Tyler Posey, terminally adorable) has a fixation on Richard Nixon and 1970s music. Director Wayne Wang, like Fiennes, seems uncomfortable with the material, as if he only did it hoping for a box-office smash.