J. Lo charming in bland ‘Maid in Manhattan’

In theaters

MAID IN MANHATTAN. Directed by Wayne Wang, written by Kevin Wade, 105 minutes, PG-13.

Now that Jennifer Lopez has succeeded in becoming the Eva Peron of pop, insisting at every opportunity she gets that in spite of her considerable fame and fortune, she’s still just one of the people, still just “Jenny from the Block,” there’s more of a temptation than ever to question just how genuine she really is.

Recent attention on her personal life isn’t helping. With two short-lived marriages and a messy break-up with Sean Combs behind her, the entertainer’s much-publicized engagement to Ben Affleck has ignited the tabloids for weeks, fueling her fame and coinciding neatly – too neatly for some -with the release of her new album, “This is Me … Then,” and her new movie, “Maid in Manhattan.”

Indeed, for some critics and fans, the J. Lo of late has been coming off less like your friendly neighborhood superstar and more like a shrewd, calculating businesswoman using her relationship with her famous fiance to boost her new projects with millions of dollars’ worth of free publicity.

It’s to her considerable benefit, then, that she appears as a Puerto Rican maid in Wayne Wang’s “Maid in Manhattan,” a ghettoized Cinderella story that goes a long way in putting Jenny squarely back in the Bronx, where her fan base first took root.

In the film, Lopez is Marisa Ventura, a single mother from the projects who works as a maid at a five-star Park Avenue hotel.

Not unlike Lopez herself when she first started out, Marisa wants a better life and is in the process of pulling that off when Manhattan’s most eligible bachelor, Christopher Marshall (Ralph Fiennes), checks into the hotel and swiftly changes everything.

Indeed, with the help of Marisa’s son, Ty (Tyler Garcia Posey), Christopher catches Marisa modeling a guest’s $5,000 Dolce & Gabbana suit.

The clothes make her look like a million, and Marshall, a wealthy Republican running for the U.S. Senate, mistakes her for someone she isn’t.

He falls hard for her on the spot – and a wealth of misunderstandings begins.

With Bob Hoskins and Natasha Richardson in supporting roles, “Maid in Manhattan” is just as tidy as its title suggests, a careful, well-pressed romantic comedy that bridges the gap between its class and ethnic differences without ever wrinkling the sheets by exploring those differences.

It’s too bland to be memorable and too formulaic to be spontaneous, but it does have a solid cast and Wang, working from a script by Kevin Wade, makes certain it goes down easily. What’s better, at least for Lopez, is that it proves she can act and has the necessary grace and charisma to carry a movie.

Indeed, if it’s possible to be real in a fantasy world, then Jennifer Lopez stands as the real thing.

Grade: B-

Christopher Smith is the Bangor Daily News film critic. His reviews appear Mondays and Fridays in Style, Tuesdays on “News Center at 5” and Thursdays on “News Center at 5:30” on WLBZ 2 and WCSH 6. He can be reached at BDNFilm1@aol.com.