Made-to-order for J-Lo

Jennifer Lopez has gained the reputation of being such a demanding diva in the past few years that it's hard to go into one of her movies without a big chip on your shoulder -- especially a piece-of-fluff romantic comedy like "Maid in Manhattan."

MOVIE REVIEW

MAID IN MANHATTAN

Hi's and J-Lo's: A timeline

DIRECTOR: Wayne Wang

CAST: Jennifer Lopez, Ralph Fiennes, Bob Hoskins

RUNNING TIME: 103 minutes

RATING: PG-13 for some language/ sexual references

WHERE: Auburn Cinema 17, Bella Bottega, Crossroads, East Valley, Everett 4-10, Factoria, Galleria, Gateway 8, Grand Cinemas, Issaquah 9, Lewis & Clark, Metro, Monroe 12, Mountlake 9, Oak Tree, Pacific Place, South Hill Mall, Woodinville 12

GRADE: B

But she wins you right over. The camera loves her, she exudes intelligence and charm (if not genuine warmth or sizzling romantic chemistry), and there's something riveting about her presence. The movie makes a surprisingly solid star vehicle for her.

She plays Cinderella, in the form of a single mom who works as a maid in a luxury Park Avenue hotel and dreams of escaping her dead-end position and building a better life for her precocious son (Tyler Garcia Posey) by going into management.

Her Prince Charming is a tabloid favorite, playboy New York assemblyman (Ralph Fiennes), whom she meets cute one day when she's all dressed up in someone else's $5,000 ensemble. He mistakenly assumes she's one of the hotel's wealthy guests.

With her son playing Cupid, they fall hard for each other, and you can guess the rest as the deception is threatened by the bitchy equivalent of Cinderella's stepsister (Natasha Richardson) and the plot moves inexorably toward that big charity ball.

It's an unabashed fairy tale, with no pretensions, no trace of gross humor and only a breath or two of sexual innuendo. Amazingly, the MPAA has rated it PG-13 under the theory, apparently, that children must be protected from even a hint of sexuality.

Indeed, the movie is so pure and uncompromising in its sheer lightness of being that slumming art-house director Wayne Wang ("The Joy Luck Club") seems to be trying to bring out the wrath of cynical critics: like waving a red flag before an angry bull.

But his film is a bit smarter than it seems at first glance, and ends up being a rather colorful and fascinating -- and often imaginatively Capraesque -- view of the downstairs life of a big Manhattan hotel, where the motto of the minions is "Aspire To Be Invisible."

Fiennes, whose natural stiffness at first seems all wrong for a movie like this, also rises to the occasion with a disarmingly appealing performance; and Bob Hoskins comes close to stealing the film with his small but showy turn as a hotel butler turned fairy godmother.

Lopez herself is completely believable in the lead. She has a great instinct for picking roles she can embody, and she gives this one a special radiance, grace and dewy-eyed credibility. Love her or hate her, the woman is her own kind of movie star.