Maid In Manhattan

By RICHARD SCHICKEL

Marisa (Jennifer Lopez) is a hard-pressed chambermaid in a tony hotel. Christopher (Ralph Fiennes) is a perfectly pressed nitwit--playing at elective politics, fooling around with supermodels, delighting the tabloids. Marisa is single-momming an adorable son (Tyler Posey). Christopher has an adorable dog. One day she tries on a rich guest's smashing new pantsuit; she looks scrumptious. He spots her in it and naturally falls in love. The usual class complications ensue.

Maid in Manhattan is not so much a movie as a collection of career moves. J. Lo needs a comedy hit to support her principal activity, adorning magazine covers. Fiennes needs to warm his austere British image if he hopes to become a true international star. Wayne Wang, the director, needs to make a movie that might elicit more than wary respect from its audience.

Because screenwriter Kevin Wade has no idea stronger than the old Cinderella angle, the movie must try to get by on clothes, decor and an appeal to our democratic ideals. Of course this nice, pretty woman should get to marry her prince. Isn't that what America is all about?

Sure. But to involve us with its characters and its inevitable happy ending, the movie requires some interruption--unexpected dizziness, a crazy comic outburst--that would disrupt its complacent reliance on the stalest of conventions. --R.S.