I tried to give Jennifer Lopez another chance. I really did. Although I’ve had a hard time watching her act in nearly every other movie I’ve seen her in (sometimes it’s been quite painful), I was determined to give her a chance to be really good. I was rooting for her.
I wanted her character to fall convincingly in love with Ralph Fiennes’ character. And I wanted them to end up happily together. I was expecting romantic comedy, after all. But when I sat back at the end of the movie, I was really tired from how hard I’d had to root, and I was still disappointed. Either I have Lopez Affective Disorder, or she really didn’t act well in this movie.
Granted, I don’t think it helped that Lopez and Fiennes were dreadfully mismatched—there was very little chemistry there. It just wasn’t terribly believable. The movie in itself was nothing terribly original or Oscar-winning, but all the same it could have been acted better. (In fact, I seem to have seen it acted better several times before…)
Jennifer Lopez plays a single mother working as a maid in a fancy New York hotel. She aspires to management but doesn’t quite trust that she’s management material. Meanwhile, Ralph Fiennes plays a famous politician staying in the hotel. He meets her while she’s messing around, trying on a rich hotel guest’s fancy clothes, thinks she’s a guest, and falls in love with her. Of course, she falls in love too, but she knows perfectly well what the complications are—she’ll be fired if management thinks she’s messing around with a guest, which of course would completely ruin her chances of becoming management herself.
Anyway, if you’re in the mood for a good light romantic comedy, skip this one. There are many others much more worth your time—try French Kiss, for one.