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MAID IN MANHATTAN
Review by Chastity Campbell
Stars: Jennifer Lopez, Ralph Fiennes
Director: Wayne Wang
Audio: 5.1 Dolby Digital
Video: 2.35:1 Anamorphic Widescreen Format & 1.33:1 Standard Fullscreen
Format
Studio: Columbia Tri-Star
Features: See Review
Length: 105 Minutes
Release Date: March 25, 2003
“I need to let you know…this can’t go any farther than tonight!”
“Then you shouldn’t have worn
that dress!”
I have heard so many people over the last two years say
over and over again that Jennifer Lopez can’t act.
I have to say this and say it loud…YES, SHE CAN!!! Now I feel better.
Maid In Manhattan is a very nice, sweet, and
wonderfully romantic movie with some comedy thrown in for good measure.
I can explain this movie for you, with two movie titles, Pretty Woman
meets Ever After. Now Julia
Roberts, J-Lo is not! Drew
Barrymore…ummm, no, not really. She
does, however, have the most wonderful ability to draw you into whatever
you’re watching with her honesty.
Maid In Manhattan stars Jennifer Lopez as Marisa, a
maid in an upscale Manhattan hotel who falls in love with a would-be Senator
played by Ralph Fiennes.
Fiennes does a really good job as the perpetually amused
Senatorial Candidate Christopher Marshall.
He’s almost always smiling in the movie and even though he needs no
help looking sexy, that smile puts him right up there with the likes of Tom
Cruise and Matt Damon.
Christopher mistakes Marisa for a wealthy socialite when he
catches her trying on a $5,000 outfit belonging to one of the hotel guests.
What’s a maid to do when she’s caught in a pair of borrowed knickers?
Take a walk in Central Park with a soon-to-be Senator, that’s what!
There are confusion, collisions, and did I mention
confusion as poor Mr. Marshall tries to figure out this woman he is falling for.
Marisa tries to avoid him, but the movie just wouldn’t work right if
they didn’t run into each other a lot and at the most inconvenient of times.
When all is revealed, will Prince charming ride off into
the sunset with his Cinderella, or will he turn into a toad and leave his
princess scrubbing floors?
I really enjoyed the lighthearted nature of this film.
Maid In Manhattan didn’t dig deep into any emotional channels,
and it didn’t make you want to analyze the motives of each character.
It did, however, go back to the basic root of what movies are supposed to
be…entertainment!
Maid In Manhattan will give the little girl in all
of us a chance to see our fairytale dreams realized on the big screen once
again. Disclaimer: Yes this is a
chick flick, guys you have been warned!
Video ***
The visual presentation for Maid In Manhattan was
very nice and easy to enjoy. Presented
in both a 2.35:1 Anamorphic Widescreen Format and a 1.33:1 Standard Fullscreen
Format, you get the full range of what this movie has to offer.
Each Aspect Ratio was very well done, and even in fullscreen, I didn’t
feel as though I was missing much due to the way the cameras always seemed to be
zoomed to just the right depth and angle.
The crisp, and very clean images had no flaws that I could
detect. During one of the outdoor
scenes, I did notice a bit of hazing around the edge of the frame, but that was
possibly due to the weather during the filming of that scene because it was a
bit overcast and gray.
Audio **
I think I was expecting a bit more than this Dolby Digital
5.1 mix delivered. The background
noise and soundtrack seemed to overwhelm the spoken dialogue on several
occasions.
The music was nice, but it tended to be a little too heavy
on the low-end effects. Not enough
bass is a bad thing; too much is not good either.
This DVD could have really benefited from an audio makeover.
Features ***
Until now, I have always thought of movie trailers on a DVD
as not much of an extra feature. Sure,
you get to see some odds and ends titles that the production company has put
out. However, this disc was so
generous I had to bump my rating up to three stars!
First you get the choice of Aspect Ratio, which I dearly
love. You can watch the movie in
widescreen or fullscreen format.
You will be greeted with Snow White-esque mirror, mirror,
on the wall menus, and subtitles in English and French once you get inside the
disc.
Moving right along to the movie trailers, we are greeted first with a promo for Maid In Manhattan. A 12 step how to with Adam Sandler & Jack Nicholson’s upcoming flick Anger Management follows next. Charlie’s Angels swoop in at Full Throttle to heat up your DVD player right before Eddie Murphy shows us the dos and do nots of being a Mr. Mom in Daddy Daycare. Finally, we get another J-Lo promo for one of her previous releases The Wedding Planner, and that as they say is that for this DVD’s features.
Summary:
