"It's Simon and Garfunkel! You Can't Just Turn Them Off!"

Last year, my dad and brother had the opportunity to spend an evening in Buffalo watching Beatlemania!, a tribute to the Beatles, which is my brother’s favorite musical group. Mom and I had acquired the tickets by chance when the two of us went to see Art Garfunkel in February; a local radio station had a booth set up, and I gave the wheel a lucky spin and walked away with the tickets. We only thought it fair to make Beatlemania! a boys’ night out to balance our February concert, but while Dad and Nathan were grooving to I Wanna Hold Your Hand and Let it Be, Mom and I decided to veg out for the evening with a couple of chick flicks. We debated a bit but wound up with two, one of which was Maid in Manhattan. Mom was especially interested in seeing it. I doubted I would strongly dislike it, but I didn’t expect it to thrill me too much either. While exceedingly high expectations sometimes lead me to think badly of an otherwise good movie, one that delivers more than I expected usually ranks high with me. I suspected from the movie’s opening moments that this would be such a film.

The film opens with shots of New York City set, I noted with excitement, to the tune of Paul Simon’s Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard, a lively Latin-flavored tune that also showed up in The Royal Tenenbaums. It captures the energy of the city well and also gives a nod to the ethnicity of the protagonist. I was just tickled to hear the song and thrilled with the opening dialogue between the titular maid, Marisa Ventura (Jennifer Lopez), and her son Ty (Tyler Posey), which reveals that the boy is a big Simon and Garfunkel fan. Now that, I thought, is one cool kid!

Ty is eccentric and precocious, driving much of the action in the film, including his mother’s first encounter with Chris Marshall (Ralph Fiennes), a senatorial candidate staying at the hotel where Marisa works. Chris is a very pleasant fellow, annoyed by all the special treatment his staff wants him to receive and refreshed by Marisa and her gregarious son. The only trouble is that when he meets her, she is wearing the luxurious outfit of a wealthy guest, a dangerous dress-up game initiated by her trouble-making fellow maid Stephanie (Marissa Matrone). They hit it off, but Chris doesn’t know Marisa’s a maid instead of a socialite and she doesn’t want him to find out. The whole story plays out much like Ever After, with the class boundaries, deception, confrontation, and eventual inevitable reconciliation. Not overly creative, I suppose, but I’m the sort of gal who can tolerate multiple incarnations of basic plotlines. I think Maid in Manhattan does very well for what it is.

Marisa is both timid and ambitious, an hard-working woman who wants to do her job well and rise to a higher position in society but makes a big mistake along the way. Lopez handles the character well, while Fiennes’ slightly aloof approach makes Chris come across as shy and kindly. I also found Posey very enjoyable in his role as the clever, match-making Ty, and supporting roles by Stanley Tucci, as Chris’ cynical campaign manager, and Bob Hoskins, the honorable head butler who sympathizes with Marisa, enhance the film considerably.

I must attribute some of my enjoyment of the movie to the unexpected presence of Simon and Garfunkel. After that promising beginning, I kept alert for any future references and was rewarded with Eva Cassidy’s exquisite rendition of Kathy’s Song toward the end of the film. The movie was not as much of a comedy as I had anticipated, but that didn’t bother me; too much of the humor in most romantic comedies I’ve seen lately tends to be crude anyway. I just found it a nice, feel-good movie with a happy ending and a nifty soundtrack. And that was good enough for me.