Maid in Manhattan

The casting agent behind this tepid affair must have had a touch of Californian sun before sketching the starring roles into the Palm Pilot.

"Jenny from the Block", with an ego that demands white orchids scattered along the M4 between Heathrow and the Dorchester, was never born to play a lowly chambermaid.

And Fiennes was never likely to make the quantum leap from the icily evil camp commandant of Schindler's List to a fluffy lead like this.

He's done romance before - the excruciatingly intense English Patient and the End Of The Affair were the sort of weepies that had viewers reaching for the Prozac.

This time he's aspiring US senator Chris Marshall while Lopez is spiky single mum Marisa, making ends meet for her son Ty (Tyler Garcia Posey).

The opening shots of the Manhattan skyline tell you this won't be a radical departure from the norm - and so it proves.

Chris mistakes her for airhead socialite Caroline Lane (Richardson) when he catches Marisa trying out her D&G coat for size while cleaning her room.

A half-hearted cross between Cinderella and Pretty Woman follows, with the components of the plot crashing into place with a deafening thud.

For a hotel-based comedy it's less Fawlty Towers and more Crossroads Motel, with a little bit of Upstairs Downstairs thrown in for good measure.

Hoskins pops up as the English head porter to deliver an utterly superfluous Churchillian speech on the nobility of cleaning up after other people.

What it boils down to is that Lopez doesn't do meek little people and Fiennes hasn't got the warmth for a matinee idol.

It's not five-star entertainment and check-out couldn't come too soon.

Oh and, by the way, the reference to J.-Lo's carpet of orchids to the Dorchester isn't true. It was Claridges.

Tim Evans