|
|
Buy it at Amazon
|
Overall rating: 3/5
Director: Wayne Wang
Starring: Jennifer Lopez, Ralph Fiennes, Natasha Richardson, Stanley Tucci, Tyler Posey, Frances Conroy, Amy Sedaris, Bob Hoskins
Maid In Manhattan tells the story of a poor working maid played by Jennifer Lopez who through a twist of fate is mistaken for a New York socialite by a dashing U.S. Assemblyman played by Ralph Fiennes.
Once Fiennes discovers her deception, he immediately dumps her, has her fired and her life slowly sinks into a pit of alcoholism and despair.
You know that I’m lying, don’t you?
Of course, you do. You saw the trailer. And once you’ve seen the trailer you know exactly what is going to happen in this movie�and no one gets dumped. Two people fall in love, difficulties arise, but they manage to work things out before the end of the picture.
The film is cast firmly in the mold of Pretty Woman, My Fair Lady and hundreds of other romantic comedies.
But even if we’ve seen it all before, it doesn’t mean that we can’t have some fun this time around. The script is lightweight and predictable, but the film gets by on easygoing charm and a cast that is much better than the material.
Lopez shines as Marisa Ventura, the titular maid, and Ralph Fiennes displays an uncharacteristic charm and warmth as her seemingly unattainable love interest. But the film works in small ways too, by the terrific casting of veteran character actors Stanly Tucci and Bob Hoskins in small parts.
Director Wayne Wang has taken a break from small, arty movies that no one sees (like The Center of the World) and made a modest romantic blockbuster. Much like the script, he seems content to let the charm of the stars do the heavy lifting, and he stays firmly in the background.
Rating: 3/5
The DVD
Video:
The movie is presented in both pan-and-scan as well as an anamorphic 2.35:1 version, which is what anyone with any common sense would watch. Like most modern DVDs, the picture quality is actually quite good. Edge enhancement is evident in a few scenes, but it wasn’t so blatant that it distracted from the film.
Sound:
The film sounds fine but makes little use of the surround channels. It’s not like J-Lo has to fight evil robot maids with her toilet brush of doom or anything.
The soundtrack features several catchy bubbly tunes that fit this sort of movie perfectly, and it also has a few slower tracks by big-time Grammy winner Norah Jones that are worth listening to. Extras:
Let me qualify that. They have the ability to watch the trailer for this movie as well as trailers for other movies. So we have free commercials. Great
They probably couldn’t fit much on here since they [acked both the pan-and-scan and anamorphic versions of the movie onto a single disc, but we expect more from the DVD medium and this movie fails to deliver.
What about a documentary on the special effect that is J-Lo’s butt? I would have watched it. Rating 2/5 Final Thoughts: Five Degrees of Seperation Pretty Woman - It’s basically the same movie, except with hookers.
Out Of Sight - My personal favorite J-Lo performance. Fantastic movie.
Clerks - Just because they serve you, doesn’t mean they like you.
Quiz Show - Fantastic look at the game-show scandals of the fifties. This is some of Fiennes best work.
The Shining - Like this movie, The Shining mostly takes place in a large hotel. I think that’s where the similarites end.
You get two options for sound: French and English. A little more probing and you can discover that the English version is in Dolby Digital 5.1 while the French is in Dolby Digital 2.0.
None.
Single men have no business watching this movie at all unless they’re on a date. Maid In Manhattan offers absolutely nothing that we haven’t seen before. But if you do have a date, or you’re a “chick flick” type of chick, there are much worse ways to spend a Saturday evening than watching this lightweight romantic comedy.
