MAID IN MANHATTAN (2002) ** Cinderella in the posh NYC hotel circuit, but more obviously a fairytale because the male lead is a Republican senator with a good environmental record. I've never been one to fall all over myself in appreciating the various talents of Jennifer Lopez, but this could have been a really bad film without her. She's absolutely convincing as the concerned, hard working single mom, she's appealing and so it's easy to hope that good things happen for her. But what's a princess without an evil witch? Natasha Richardson is clearly having a good time in making fun of an entire sub-species of women, and she's watched them enough to know what's funny, if alluring in a cheap magazine way, about them. Never gets close to eclipsing Ms. Lopez, but if she had she'd have been doing it wrong. So you don't have to worry about whether there's going to be a happy ending, no metaphysical angst to process at the end of this one, thank you!
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