J-Lo vs J-Fo

Monster-in-Law
Director: Robert Luketic
Cast: Jennifer Lopez, Jane Fonda, Michael Vartan, Wanda Sykes, Elaine Stritch
Released: May 13, 2005
Viewed in theaters: May 17, 2005

This is not a very good movie that was lucky enough to get two big stars in J-Lo and Jane Fonda. (J. Fo?) I was surprised when I read that this was Jane Fonda's first movie in 15 years - the last movie she did prior to this was in 1990.

The movie wastes no time getting Charlie (J-Lo (wait, is it J-Lo or J. Lo? Now I'm second guessing myself...)) together with Kevin (Michael Vartan) because they want to quickly introduce us to Kevin's mother, Viola (Jane Fonda) who will soon make Charlie's life a living hell. When we are introduced to Charlie, we learn that she lives with her gay roommate and friend, Remy (Adam Scott, who along with J-Lo's other friend, has nothing to do) and she has a lot of jobs as she works at a temp agency. Her many jobs (from the past and present) include: a dog walker (like you couldn't get a teenager to do that? That's an actual job that temps get?), a receptionist at a doctor's office, a yoga instructor, a caterer, a waitress for parties that her friend caters, and a Little League coach which just seems out of left field, no pun intended. She must be a terrible dog walker because we see her pick up two dobermans from a rich lady and the next scene later she's walking five dogs on the beach...and there are no dobermans in sight! Where did they go? She takes a break on the beach to read her horoscope and it says she's going to find love today. I don't even remember if her sign is mentioned, but I really don't think that matters. At that moment, an attractive shirtless man runs across the beach and catches her eye. The next day, Charlie will be at a coffee shop (ordering coffee; I'm surprised she doesn't work there!) and she will run into the same man on her way out. He says hello to her, but she just gets flustered and runs out after replying hello to him. Then she will see him the next night when she's helping her friend at a party she's catering. Of course, he is Kevin, the man with the overbearing mother that she will eventually start dating. They try to throw a wrench in their relationship by having another woman, Fiona, try to come between them which seems redundant because don't we already have that with Kevin's mother? I guess Fiona works with Kevin (who's a surgeon) which explains why she was at the party and they once dated, but while Fiona is still into him, Kevin doesn't have any feelings for her. She ends up telling Charlie not to get too attached to Kevin because he's gay and says he's getting married in December to another doctor (played by Will Arnett). Charlie sees them sitting together, talking and laughing, so she automatically assumes it must be true, despite the fact that Kevin was smiling and flirting with her all night. Oh, and he also asked for her number so he calls her, but Charlie doesn't answer. He catches her on the beach and she tells him, "I don't know why you called me. I'm a woman." This baffles him, then he realizes she thinks he is gay, and tells her he isn't. He asks her out on a date and after giving her a poetic answer about what color her eyes are, she is smitten. Their relationship will be smooth sailing from here on out aside from Kevin's mother and the random woman, Fiona.

We are introduced to Viola Fields the same day she will be losing her job and she doesn't take it so well. She is a daytime talk show host, akin to Oprah, who has interviewed some pretty prominent people (and has met Oprah!) and has won five Emmys. She is being replaced by someone younger because the show is trying to appeal to a younger demographic. Unfortunately, for Viola, her last guest will be a 17-year-old pop star singer who is obviously supposed to be Britney Spears-esque. After singing a terrible, manufactured song, Viola interviews her and the young woman tells her she likes watching "old" movies and rattles off Grease, Benji, The Little Mermaid, Free Willy, and Legally Blonde as examples. As she is going through her list, Viola looks livid. Okay, let's talk this through. This movie takes place in "present day" 2005, which means the pop star (I'm sure they said what her name is, but I don't remember, or more accurately, don't care enough to remember) was born in 1988. Grease and Benji came out in the '70s, so it makes sense she would consider them old. The Little Mermaid ('89) and Free Willy ('93), both came out after she was born, so if she thinks those movies are old, then does she think she is old at 17? But I understand that's part of the joke. The kicker for me is that she considers Legally Blonde an "old" movie. Remember, this is 2005. That means Legally Blonde is only four years old in this timeline! I understood the joke after I looked up the director of this movie, Robert Luketic. He also directed Legally Blonde (a MUCH better movie than this), so I guess that was just a little inside joke.

Viola ends up physically attacking the girl because she says something asinine and they're trying to go to commercial break during this physical altercation, but it's too late and everybody who is watching has already seen what has happened (I guess this must be a live show!) After taking a four month hiatus from life in general, she finds out that her son has been dating someone for that entire time, but doesn't think it's serious. It's a little intimidating for Charlie because she knows how close Kevin is to his mother (she calls him like four times a day which is a bit extreme!) and she lives in this huge mansion. Kevin is also a little nervous about his two favorite women meeting, but they get along just grandly, laughing and chatting as they're having tea and cake in the garden. Kevin is so thrilled that he proposes to Charlie right there...while his mother is sitting next to her. Not the most romantic move, there. Then we see Viola hugging Charlie, then slamming her face in the cake, but it was just her imagining that happening. (The slamming her face in the cake part, she did actually hug her, although how genuine it was, that remains to be seen!)


While this is going on, Viola's (very loyal and very patient) assistant, Ruby (Wanda Skyes) is observing the whole thing from a distance and is muttering under her breath for Charlie to say no because she knows Viola is not taking this news very well. But, of course, Charlie says yes. Earlier, Ruby had told Viola, who is a bit of a lush, that she had locked up all the alcohol and liquor after she returned from her four-moth hiatus, so Viola is rummaging through the bathroom medicine cabinet and finds mouth wash that has 14% alcohol and that's good enough for her. She comes to the conclusion that Charlie must be pregnant and that's why Kevin wants to marry her. When she brings this up, they tell her that Charlie is not pregnant. This still baffles Viola and she tells them, "Call me old-fashioned, marriage is a sacred union that should only be entered into with the utmost care." Charlie gets a stab back at her, asking her, "Weren't you married four times?" To which Viola replies, "Yes, which would make me an expert don't you think?" We know that her first husband is Kevin's dad, her second marriage was to a TV exec who got her her first on-air job, and her third marriage was to an actor who turned out to be gay and had an affair with her second husband. There's a bit of an on-going joke that she seems to be attracted to gay men. I don't remember any information about her fourth husband. Viola just can't get it through her head that her son, a "brilliant surgeon" is going to marry a "temp". She figures that Charlie is a gold digger and she's going to make it her "project" to create a wedge between her son and his fiancee.

Viola's first order of business it to embarrass her daughter-in-law to be at a engagement party she's hosting at her house. Both Kevin and Charlie show up wearing casual clothes (Charlie is wearing a white linen dress so it's not like she's super casual) because they were under the assumption Viola was throwing a BBQ with close family friends. Has Kevin ever met his mother? She doesn't seem like the type of woman who would have a BBQ or even know how to barbecue! Instead, it turns out to be a fancy black tie party where Viola has invited many dignitaries. She does this to embarrass Charlie because she immediately starts introducing her to a prince, the man who introduced the Euro to the global market, the poet laureate, and the Secretary of Commerce and after introducing each of them to Charlie, she tells them that Charlie is a "temp".

She tells Kevin and Charlie that she has more appropriate attire for them in the house. I was thinking the dress she had picked out for Charlie would be hideous, but it was this beautiful vintage dress that Charlie was excited to wear. The only hitch was that it was too small and she could barely get it over her hips. Viola invites Fiona to flirt with Kevin and she comes onto him and of course Charlie sees them kissing and huffs away. I was surprised when Fiona tells her that she was just giving him a "congratulatory kiss." Kevin is able to placate her and they go home and everything is okay with them once again, because, let's face it, Fiona isn't a problem. I really don't know why she's needed in this movie.

Viola has Ruby looking up anything she can find on Charlie, but she comes with nothing. Charlie has no criminal record, no debt, got decent grades in school, went to design school, and has had a string of odd jobs. When Viola asks her about drugs or promiscuity, Ruby replies, "She's had fewer lovers in her lifetime than you did at closing day of Woodstock." I don't know how she found out about all of her past boyfriends, but this line did make me laugh. And wow, Viola must have been a ho back in her day...yikes!

It becomes Viola's mission to not only drive Charlie crazy, but also drive her away from her son as well. As she tells Ruby, "Every woman knows when you marry a man, you also marry his mother." I feel like she has very outdated (even for 2005!) views on marriage. She invites Charlie out to lunch (by the way, J-Lo has some very enviable outfits in this movie, this one included) where she just pretty much starts planning their wedding with doves and horse-drawn carriages and other things Charlie isn't into. She also presents her with a frilly pink wedding planner book. Charlie puts her foot down and firmly tells her thanks, but no thanks, that they don't want any of her input. This causes Viola to faint on the outside patio where they're eating lunch, causing a scene. A woman nearby asks if she's dead and Charlie tells her no, then under her breath, she mutters, "It can't be that easy." Okay. That was funny. This movie isn't that great, but there were a few funny moments, this one included. It turns out that Viola had an anxiety attack and Kevin tells Charlie that his mother told him that Charlie was yelling at her about not being able to plan the wedding, which Charlie admits to.

The doctor tells Viola she needs no stress, so Kevin and Charlie agree (well, Charlie reluctantly agrees!) that Viola should live with them until she feels better. Oh, I should probably mention that Charlie has moved in with Kevin, but that makes sense since they're engaged. I'm not really sure why living with her son and her son's fiancee would give her less stress when she has that nice mansion she can lounge around in, but whatever. This is all part of Viola's evil plan.

Kevin has to go out of town the first few days after Viola moves in, so it's just Charlie and her future mother-in-law. Like that's not awkward at all! The first night, Viola keeps Charlie up all night because she's crying. She forgot to take her pills and asks Charlie to get them for her, then when Charlie returns with them, she needs water, then she needs ice in her water, and so on. Even after all that, she tells Charlie she doesn't want to be alone and wants Charlie to spend the night with her. I definitely would have put my foot down at that! But Charlie obliges and pretty much gets beat up because Viola is thrashing all over the place while she's sleeping and hits her in the face a few times. A little extreme on Viola's part.

The next day, Viola tells Charlie she called her lawyer to update her will because she wanted to include her and has some questions she needs to ask which include are there any hereditary illness in her family and is she an illegal alien? (I mean, she seems pretty American to me!) Charlie gets suspicious when Viola asks her how many men has she been sexually active with and Charlie wants to know why would they want to know that and Viola winks at her and says "That many, huh?"  She also asks Charlie if she would be willing to sign a prenuptial agreement. When Charlie questions that, Viola pretends to be outraged and says, "I know, they're such nosy bastards! It's none of the business! Okay, this scene was pretty funny, thanks to Jane Fonda's reactions to J-Lo's incredulousness. Much like the scene where we see Viola imaging herself smashing Charlie's head into a cake, Charlie has a fantasy of slapping Viola across the face with a pan and knocking her off the stool she's sitting on. 

When Charlie invites her two friends over (when Viola is gone), Remy tells her he found out Viola has been investigating Charlie. I did like the line when he said "I was upstairs in her room, minding my own business..." Charlie discovers she has her high school transcripts and super up close photos of her taken at the beach and wonders when they were even taken. She also discovers that the anti anxiety pills Viola's been taking are actually chewable vitamin Cs. The hilarious part is that she had to get that confirmed by one of the doctors at the office where she works at a part time receptionist. I feel like if you saw a chewable ("chewable" being the operative word), you would be able to tell that's what it was). 

Charlie gets her worst revenge on Viola when she brings home a bunch of dogs she's been walking. One of the dobermans we saw her walking earlier in the movie growls at Viola when she comes home and she calls to Charlie to help her. When Charlie comes out, she's been in the kitchen cooking what looks to be spaghetti sauce. She still has the spoon in her hand and when she tells the dog to back down, she flings the spoon and end up flinging sauce on Viola's white pantsuit. Charlie apologizes and asks if it was expensive and Viola replies, "It was." She then goes up to her room and that's when the audience, along with Viola, discover a pack of dogs in her room, including the other doberman. There are dogs on her bed, dogs on the carpet, dogs ripping up pillows, dogs ripping up bedsheets, dogs just ruining everything in sight. Yeah, I would be pretty ticked off too! Although, if you think about it, this is Kevin's house, so why is Charlie letting the dogs ruin the carpet, bed, and other furniture in the room if all this stuff is his? We never do see his reaction to this. How convenient.

The night before the wedding, there's a small wedding party gathering and Viola ends up putting nuts in the gravy because Charlie is allergic. The two of them keep going back and forth with their antics, it's hard to remember the score. Ruby tells her not to do that and Viola decides that's even a bit too extreme for her. But while they are chatting, another guest brings out the gravy boat that has the nuts (which are pretty big so you think everyone would notice that there are nuts in the gravy!) and Charlie ends up having some and her face swells up and she has these humongous lips. Lucky for her, on the day of the wedding, she wakes up to her perfectly beautiful face again. 

Charlie has asked Viola to be her Maid of Honor (I don't care if you even get along great with your mother-in-law; that's a weird person to ask to be your MoH!) It seems she's only doing it to embarrass her because she has this hideous peach colored (Viola's favorite color) dress for her to wear. It is the day of the wedding and these two are still going at it. There was a scene a few days earlier where they are both eating lunch and Viola makes a snide remark at Charlie, saying, "Just so you know, Kevin likes his girls thin" after Charlie tells her she wants the dress to fit her and not the other way around. Yes, Charlie is curvy, but sheesh, she's not fat. 

Charlie's friend (the one who isn't Adam Scott, the female friend...she really has nothing to do and I literally cannot remember her name or care to remember) tells her she spoke to the priest and confirmed with him that he's going to skip over the part where he says, "If anyone objects, speak now or forever hold your peace." You know, I've been to a handful of weddings in my life and I don't think I've ever heard that during a wedding ceremony. It could be I just don't remember because nobody said anything when it was said, but I'm pretty sure it's mostly used for movies and TV shows for the drama.

Viola shows up to the wedding wearing a white dress and that just about sends Charlie over the edge. When Kevin's paternal grandmother, Gertrude (Elaine Stritch) shows up, we find out that she and Viola have a relationship not unlike Viola and Charlie where they're always going back and forth and sniping at each other. I had to laugh when Gertrude exclaims, "My grandson is marrying an exotic Latina!", because, again, she seems very American and non-exotic to me.

It doesn't take long for the two older women to start squabbling and Gertrude accuses Viola of killing her son. As she tells her, "All the doctors agree - my son died of terminal disappointment!" Her first husband must have died pretty young if she was able to get married three more times, or either those marriages didn't last very long. Viola snaps back that Gertrude killed her son because she smothered him to death and that nobody was ever good enough for him. Obviously these two women have a lot in common. After Gertrude leaves the room, Charlie tells Viola that she realizes in thirty years, they will be doing the exact same thing and while she wants to marry Kevin because they make each other happy, but because Viola's not going to let that happen (her plan is to move to the same neighborhood as Kevin and Charlie), she decides to call the wedding off.

When she goes to find Kevin, I checked to see how much time was left. There was ten minutes remaining so I knew this had to be wrapped up soon. And it was. Before Charlie can say anything to Kevin, Viola stops her, telling her she needs to talk to her. She apologizes to Charlie and tells her she wants her to get married to her son because he makes her happy and she promises she'll butt out of their lives, but Charlie tells her she wants her to be involved with her grandchildren when she and Kevin start having kids. Yay, everyone loves each other, yay. 

J-Lo's had 'Enough' and she's not going to take it anymore!

Enough

Director: Michael Apted

Cast: Jennifer Lopez, Billy Campbell, Juliette Lewis, Dan Futterman, Fred Ward

Released: May 24, 2002

Viewed in theaters: June 2, 2002

This movie. OMG, this movie. It could have been so good if it had a better screenplay, if it weren't so damned rushed and made more sense! It was like this movie just couldn't wait to the part where J-Lo lays the smackdown on her husband (or was he her ex by this time? IDK...tells how much I was paying attention to it!) Yes, this is the movie where J-Lo beats up her abusive husband and you are rooting for her to do it because he just smacks her around (and even pushes their five year old daughter off of him when she jumps on him when he's beating up her mom and that really pisses off J-Lo). Apparently it's based on a book by Anna Quindlen called "Black and Blue. " (I can't remember if you italicize, underline, or put book titles in quotation marks, so I did all three!) I have a feeling it's very loosely based on that book.

The way Slim (Lopez - and who the hell is named "Slim"? Sounds like it should have been one of her aliases instead of her real name!) and Mitch, the abusive husband (Billy Campbell) meet doesn't make any sense. Slim is a waitress at a diner in L.A. along with her best friend, Ginny (Juliette Lewis) and one afternoon this guy, I don't know his name, but we'll just call him Carter since he's played by Noah Wyle, so Carter is sitting in a booth reading a book being waited on by Sim and he's flirting with her and Ginny tells Slim to ask him out so she goes back and starts flirting with him and they make plans for a date and as this is going on, I'm thinking, I don't remember Carter being the abusive husband in this, but then the camera pans farther back so we see a guy get up in the booth behind Carter and tell him he's a jerk because he overheard Carter making a bet with a friend that he could get Slim to sleep with him and this makes Slim angry and tells Carter to get out. The guy who had defended her is Mitch and she is very thankful for what he did and they end up dating and get married and have a daughter. And everything is fine as they are the picture of a happy family until one day, Slim finds out her husband is cheating on her. By now their daughter is about five, so everything has been going pretty smoothly for at least five years. When Slim confronts him about this, he smacks her and tells her some bs about he has needs that she can't fulfill.

We also later found out that he's friends with Carter (who didn't see that coming?) and they had planned this little trick along. I don't know why he ended up marrying Slim if she wasn't satisfying him and why he wanted to stay married to her, but he gets really possessive of her and it was really weird how they were happy for at least five years and then he snaps and starts acting like a total jerk to her. Oh, and the time it takes from when they meet to the first time he hits her? Seven minutes. I'm pretty sure that's what it was. It was really rushed! And remember, this is in a span of at least five years! WTF?

So Slim keeps getting smacked around and she tries everything she can to escape but this guy has thought of everything and she can't get past him. Even when she escapes with her daughter to stay with a friend, Joe (Dan Futterman) in Seattle, Mitch and his cronies suspect that she might be there and threaten Joe so Slim leaves because she doesn't want to put anyone she cares about in danger.

With the help of Ginny, Slim and her daughter do managed to escape for quite a while without being detected by Mitch. She has cut her hair really short and changed her name to Erin. She is able to get money from her rich estranged father, Jupiter (Fred Ward) so she doesn't have to worry about her finances. They're there for a few months before Carter finds them (I forget how he tracked them down) and he tries to run her car off the road which results in a long car chase until she drives under a structure which his huge SUV can't fit under and he gets stuck.

The time has finally come for the attack! Slim has had one training session with a buff black dude (okay, it was probably more than one session, but the way it was filmed, it looked like she learned all this stuff in one day) and she is ready to kick Mitch's ass. She sneaks into his house at night and while he goes to work the next day, she accesses the place and moves his guns so he won't be able to find them, learns how to cut off and turn back on the power, moves the furniture around so she won't get tripped up on it when she's fighting Mitch. He comes home later that night and we get the big show down between the two of them and I do love the scene where Slim smacks Mitch and he says he doesn't want to fight and she goes, "Oh, so now you can't hit back? You didn't have trouble hitting me when I was defenseless." It doesn't take long before he is pissed off and starts hitting back. There's a moment where she has an opportunity when he is (seemingly) conscious, but she can't  do it, so she calls her friend, but while on the phone, she gets attacked and knocked out by him. But she's not totally knocked out that she can't kick him in the groin and send him flying off the balcony to his death. Or something like that. I can't remember exactly how it went. She ends up reunited with her daughter (who she sent on a vacation with her friend and her children) and ends up with Joe. Yay.

I seriously felt like I was getting whiplash from this movie.

Dreaming Of You

Selena
Director: Gregory Nava
Cast: Jennifer Lopez, Edward James Olmos, Jon Seda, Jackie Guerra
Released: March 21, 1997

Late at night when all the world is sleeping...

I stay up and think of you...

and I still can't believe 

that you came up to me

and said, "I love you."

....I love you too!

That's my favorite line from my favorite Selena song. To be fair, I only know two of her songs: "Dreaming of You" and "I Could Fall in Love", both of which are featured in this movie, to nobody's surprise. This is a biopic about Selena Quintanilla (yes, she did have a last name!), a Mexican-American growing up in Texas who started singing with her brother and sister when she was around 12 in a band her father created, then started branching out as a solo singer when she became a teenager. Even though she knew English (I believe it was her first language), she sung in Spanish so she was very popular with the Spanish-speaking population of America, and Mexico, of course. In fact, I just checked Wiki and it said her father had to teach her how to say the words phonetically, so she did not know Spanish. I guess he thought it would be an easier market than the English-speaking one! She was nominated for Best Mexican/American album (I had no idea that was even a category!) at the Grammys in 1994 and won which propelled her status with the rest of the world and was invited to make her first English-speaking album which came out the next year.

Now none of this really warrants a movie about someone's life. It's great to see someone slowly become more successful, but there were really no struggles that she had to go through (well, that's not totally true...she did have a couple, but we'll get to those later). But it's not like she was Tina Turner who literally came from nothing to make something of herself, only to have to endure with an abusive spouse. The reason that there is a biopic about Selena is because she was murdered at the very young age of 23. We'll get to who murdered her, and why and how and all that later. She was murdered in 1995 and this movie came out two years later (in fact, almost to the date as she was killed on March 31). It does seem like they were trying to capitalize on her death by having the movie released only a couple years later...you know they probably made it only a year after she died. But if they got the family's permission (which I believe they did), then that's all that matters.

Before she was
"J-Lo"

Jennifer Lopez plays Selena. At the time, she wasn't J-Lo as we all know and love her. (Or not if you're not a J-Lo fan!) This was her first starring role. She was 28 and plays Selena from ages 17-23. She looks young enough that it's not an issue and when she plays teenaged Selena they do a good job with giving her a short haircut with bangs and dress her in denim shorts and clothes a teen would wear. Her hair was really dark...even more dark than when you see Lopez with dark hair, like it was almost black. When she had bangs, I could see "Selena" and forget that Jennifer Lopez was there...except when she talked because Jennifer Lopez always sounds like, well, Jennifer Lopez! But when she had her hair back and didn't have bangs, oh man, all I saw was Jennifer Lopez. Especially in this one scene where she's wearing a leather newsboy cap that totally screams J-Lo. All I could see was a young Jennifer Lopez. It was a little distracting. Of course, I'm seeing this movie all these years later after Jennifer Lopez has become a huge name in the business, so of course it's going to be distracting. At the time this movie was released, she had been in a few things, but hadn't become what she is now. But I think she did very well for her first starring role. When she sang, they used Selena's tracks over the song so you would hear her voice, which thank God, because Selena was a much better singer than J-Lo is! Plus it would be weird hearing J-Lo's voice singing Selena's songs!  Here is a photo of the real Selena next to Jennifer Lopez: 

The most interesting part of the movie and the thing she struggles with most is her relationship with her band's guitarist, Chris Perez (Jon Seda). Chris comes from a rough and tumble background that her father and manager (Edward James Olmos) does not approve of, but he plays one hell of a guitar which is why he got the gig. Her father is very strict with her. He does not like her wearing her studded brasiers, even though she would wear them with pants so it wasn't like she was showing that much skin! Actually, the worst outfit she wears in the entire movie is what (appeared to be) was her final performance. She was wearing this purple jumpsuit and it was open at the stomach so you could see skin there...which was just really weird. Plus J-Lo and her Kim Kardishan-sized butt looked ridiculous in it. Maybe the real Selena pulled it off better, although she would still have that weird stomach baring circle of non-fabric. Her best outfit was the dress she wore at the Grammys. But I'm getting off topic...after her father discovered they were in a relationship, he yelled at both of them, accused Chris of only wanting to be with his daughter for her money,

fired Chris, yelled at Selena some more, she cried, he held his ground. Selena and Chris secretly stayed together, she would find time to sneak out to be with him. They eloped in 1992 and by this time she was a well-known figure within the Mexican-American community and her wedding was leaked on the radio right away, forcing Selena to tell her father. She had planned to tell him anyway...but wanted to give it a day or two before she did. He told her that at first he was angry, but then understood why she did it and he was proud of her and welcomed Chris to the family. I don't know if it went that smoothly in real life! Probably not!

Sometimes this movie played like a really bad episode of Ugly Betty, you know the hijinks of a Mexican-American family. But even Ugly Betty was never as bad as this movie got sometimes. For instance, there's a scene when a young-and-upcoming Selena is driving somewhere in a van with her brother and sister and it breaks down so they have to pull over by the side of the road. The brother tries to wave some cars down, but they pass, and Selena says, "Let me show you how it's done" and of course she gets the first car to pull over because she's beautiful and wearing skimpy clothes and there are two young guys in the car who pull over to help them. They get really excited when they realize the hot chick they're going to help is Selena and say in these really thick accents, "Ooh, eeet's Seeeleeeenaaaaa!" But that wasn't the worst part. No, the worse part is when they're about to call their dad to let them know that the van broke down and Selena says, "I can just see it now" and then she mocks her dad saying, "You guys did what!?!?!?" Then cut to their father on the phone exclaiming, "You guys did what?!?!?" Oh my God, it was SO bad! So terrible! So cringeworthy. So awful. That was the worst example, but it was little things like that which didn't elevate the movie any higher.

There was another scene which I'm 150 percent sure never happened in real life and was only thrown in to the movie for comedic relief or the director was a huge fan of Pretty Woman. Selena has just been nominated for her first Grammy and takes her entourage to Los Angeles to go shopping.  When you think of Grammys and buying a dress for the event, where is the first place you would go? Probably NOT the mall....but that is where she and her sister (or a friend...I can't remember who was with her) go. What the hell? The freakin' mall? To buy a dress for the Grammys? Ridiculous. They do find a higher-end store because when Selena is looking at a dress, a saleswoman passes by and she says, "Excuse me, how much for this dress?" and the saleswoman sniffs and says, "More than you can afford. It's $700." Obviously she was being racist to this young Latina woman. Well, being that this is Los Angeles and Selena is popular with Mexican-Americans and L.A. is full of them (imagine that!), a Hispanic custodian sees Selena go into the dressing room and he starts passing the word on and soon all the Hispanic people who work at the mall are coming to that store and crowding around. The white, 40-ish saleswoman is really confused and has no idea what's going on. Selena has a very Vivian Ward moment where she tells the saleswoman, "I won't be needing that dress...but thanks." In the end, she chose a beautiful dress for the Grammys that did NOT look like it came from the damn mall!

For anyone watching this who wasn't familiar with Selena or her story, they would get very confused by her death scene. They don't actually show it, which I understand, probably out of respect for the family as it had only been two years since her death. But even I was like, "What the hell just happened?" even though I know that Selena was murdered by the woman who ran her fan club. She was appointed the job in 1994. In early 1995, Selena's father began receiving calls from people who never got their stuff. I would always see information about fan clubs in my CD booklets, but I never joined any so I have no idea what it all entailed. Do fan clubs still exist even? I honestly have no idea. He did an investigation and discovered that she had embezzled more than $60,000 from the money fans were sending in to join the fan club and from the fashion line Selena had. Holy crap. I forgot where Mr. Q found her, but didn't they do a background check on this woman? When Selena goes to confront her, this is when she was killed. I guess the woman was scared and she didn't want Selena to blab and go to the police....so shooting someone will make it all better. If you think you're going to get some time for embezzling, I'm pretty sure you're gonna get some hard time for murder! Idiot. Hope she's enjoying her time in prison! And it's just really sad being that Selena was only 23 and had a bright future ahead of her as a rising star with her first English-language album just being released a few months later after her death. I remember "Dreaming Of You" and "I Could Fall in Love" being played all over the radio during that time.

In the movie, they show a bunch of cop cars at the motel where Selena went to talk to her murderer. Then you see her death being announced on TV and her family at the hospital looking very crushed and devastated. She was still alive after she was shot and was rushed to the hospital, but they couldn't save her. The part that made me really tear up was the end when they played "Dreaming of You" (of course!) and showed images of the real Selena from her various moments in life and footage of people mourning her death and placing flowers and cards as memorials.

And because the text doesn't do it any justice, here's the audio form of my favorite line from my favorite Selena song. Beautiful!

Maid to Order!

Maid in Manhattan
Director: Wayne Wang
Cast: Jennifer Lopez, Ralph Fiennes, Natasha Richardson, Stanley Tucci, Bob Hoskins
Released: December 13, 2002
Viewed in theaters: December 16, 2002

This movie is like a PG-rated version of Pretty Woman, only replace a prostitute with a hotel maid. As for as romantic comedies go, this one is meh. It's not great, but it's not horrible. Jennifer Lopez and Ralph Fiennes are fine in their roles, except they really don't have any chemistry with each other. Lopez is Marissa, a single mother of a ten-year-old boy, Ty. She works as a maid for a fancy New York Hotel where they receive many important guests. This includes Senator Chris (Fiennes) who is staying there with his assistant (Tucci) and dog. All I can tell you about Chris is that he's a Republican...I really don't remember anything else about his politics. Either because it was boring or because there really was nothing else.

The late, great Natasha Richardson plays socialite Caroline who is also staying at the hotel the same time as Chris. She is a bit demanding of Marisa, asking her to do this and do that. This includes taking back a designer outfit to the store that she doesn't want. In one of the stupidest scenes of the movie, while Marissa and a fellow maid friend are in the room with Marissa gathering the garment, her friend eggs her on to try on the outfit. It's white pants, a white sleeveless turtleneck, and a white coat. (Duh, it's the outfit in the above photo!) Marissa says no, she can't do that, but her friend says it's her size and it's going back to the store anyway so it doesn't belong to Caroline so what's the problem? Uh, because you shouldn't try on other people's clothes, you dolt!

Meanwhile, Ty is at the hotel because his dad couldn't pick him up for a trip they were suppose to take so Marissa has to watch him. I don't know why she didn't leave him with her mother, but instead brings him to work. He sneaks off from doing homework and runs into Chris and his assistant and dog in an elevator. Ty knows who he is and Chris is impressed with his knowledge of politics. We had already seen a scene earlier of Ty giving a speech on Richard Nixon, so you'd think the movie was establishing he was into politics, right? No, wrong! He did the speech on Nixon because he's obsessed with the '70s as J-Lo later tells Fiennes. WTF? What kind of kid from 2002 likes the '70s? Nobody likes the '70s! Horrible music, horrible fashion, horrible home furnishings! It's the decade that gave us The Brady Bunch for god's sake! I mean, c'mon!

So Chris tells Ty that he is taking his dog for a walk and Ty asks if he can come and Chris says sure why not. Okay, yeah, just go for a walk with Voldemort! But seriously, it's a little weird that Chris is letting a young boy take a walk with him. Like that's not going to be suspicious to people who see that in the paper. He tells Ty to get permission from his mom so he takes them all up to Caroline's suite (I guess she told him where she would be) and Marisa is wearing the all-white ensemble (and quickly hides the tag). She gives a "be quiet" motion to her son not to blow her cover and pretends to be the Caroline who is staying in the suite. She goes out for a walk with Chris in Central Park wearing that all white outfit. You think something is going to happen, like a rip or a stain, and while there is a moment of horror when a magazine gets stuck to her butt (don't ask), everything is fine and she is able to return the outfit to the closet (she never had time to return it to the store) safe and sound. And not only do they walk around Central Park, but they also go to the zoo. So you're outside for a couple hours and don't even get one little stain on all that white fabric? Uh huh.

Chris is very taken with "Caroline" and wants to meet her again. However, when he sends a note to the suite asking Caroline to meet him for lunch, the note gets to the real Caroline and she is giddy because she had met Chris before once and knew they had "shared a moment". Marisa and the head butler (Bob Hoskins) are there to help out (I don't know why they need two people to help serve two people eating lunch...) and Marissa has to hide herself so Chris doesn't see her. Remember, he doesn't know she's a maid and thinks she's a rich socialite! When Chris sees a white blond woman enter, he is very confused and asks where that hot Latina woman is. Okay, he didn't say that! He actually referred to her as "Mediterranean." Butler Hoskins realizes that it's Marissa he's referring to and lets her leave so she can quit hiding behind flower vases and tea pots.

While driving somewhere, Chris sees Marissa and Ty walking and pulls over to talk to them. He tells them he's going to the Bronx to...I don't remember....and Marissa says "Blah, blah, you can't learn everything from just visiting there once. You didn't grow up there like I did or live there like I do." You think that this is going to be a political movement that will bring them closer together. Maybe Marissa will point out some issues that need to be addressed within her home district and he will bring awareness to it, but no, it never goes there.

He invites her to some ball, and Marissa, still keeping up the charade, gets all dolled up in her Cinderella moment. There she runs into Caroline who recognizes her and outs her in front of Chris and everybody and accuses her of wearing her clothes. Somehow she found out about that...I forgot how. Marissa is fired and Chris is angry she lied to her. Who really cares. They only spent a day walking in a park and then had a one night stand after the Cinderella dance. But then Ty brings them back together and they become one of New York's most high profiled couple! GROAN!

Oh, I forgot to mention another really stupid scene: Marissa needs something, so she goes down to the hotel's gift shop (I'm assuming) and the woman at the register is talking on the phone and it's obvious she's talking with a friend and not helping out a customer and she's just blowing off Marissa and the other people behind her until Marissa finally yells at her and tells her to do her damn job. This scene is only in here to establish that Marissa would make a fine good manager, a job that her friend has applied her for. I have never seen somebody in customer service blatantly ignoring a customer while talking to a friend on the phone. You would have to be PRETTY STUPID to do that!

The more I think about it, the more stupid this movie is!