Director – Amy Jones, Screenplay – Perry Howze, Randy Howze & Amy Jones, Producers – Mort Engelberg & Herb Jaffe, Photography – Shelly Johnson, Music – Georges Delerue, Special Effects – Roger George, Inc., Production Design – Jeffrey Townsend. Production Company – The Vista Organization.
Cast
Ally Sheedy (Jessie Montgomery), Beverly D’Angelo (Stella), Dick Shawn (Stan Starkey), Valerie Perrine (Georgette Starkey), Michael Ontkean (Nick McGuire), Tom Skerritt (Charles Montgomery), Merry Clayton (Audrey Jones), Begona Plaza (Maria), Theodore Wilson (Woodrow), Leland Crooke (Dude)
Plot
Jessie Montgomery is a spoilt Beverly Hills rich girl who likes to party without any cares in the world. After she is pulled over and arrested with drugs found in her possession, her father wishes he did not have a daughter. Jessie is collected from jail by Stella who says she is her fairy godmother. Stella explains that Jessie’s old life does not exist anymore. Jessie ignores this and tries to return home only to find her father and the servants do not recognise her and be chased off the property. Left homeless, Jessie takes Stella’s suggestion that she get a job. She visits an employment agency that is seeking a maid for talent agent Stan Sharkey. Jessie is accepted but, once on the job, proves to be completely clueless about how to work as a maid.
Amy Jones, sometimes credited as Amy Holden Jones, emerged in the film industry in the 1970s. She has credits as everything from an assistant to Martin Scorsese on Taxi Driver (1976) to an editor on Joe Dante’s first film Hollywood Boulevard (1976). Roger Corman gave her her breaks as director of the slasher film The Slumber Party Massacre (1982). She went on to make the Jamie Lee Curtis-starring Love Letters (1983) also for Corman, followed by Maid to Order and her final directorial outing with the Halle Berry-starring The Rich Man’s Wife (1996). She has written quite a number of scripts for everything from Mystic Pizza (1988), Beethoven (1992), Indecent Proposal (1993), The Getaway (1994) to The Relic (1997). In more recent years, she has created/produced the tv series’ Black Box (2014) and the medical drama The Resident (2018- ).
Maid to Order was construed as a vehicle for Ally Sheedy. Sheedy emerged as part of the new generation of 1980s teen stars that were nicknamed the Brat Packers, where she made high-profile appearances in films like WarGames (1983), The Breakfast Club (1985) and St Elmo’s Fire (1985). Maid to Order was a solo starring vehicle for Sheedy but ended up being a commercial flop. It did receive a theatrical release but not widely, and soon went to video. Surprisingly, it is one film that has not been rereleased in the dvd era.
Maid to Order is a Light Fantasy film. The heyday for this genre was in the 1940s but the 1980s saw a revival of many of its themes. It borrows the essentials of It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) wherein a suicidal James Stewart was shown a vision of what life would be without him. Similarly here, Ally Sheedy gets bumped over into an alternate life where she no longer exists due to a Wish made by her father (Tom Skerritt). Thereafter, the two films differ – It’s a Wonderful Life focused on the people affected by James Stewart’s absence, whereas Maid to Order has a couple of scenes with Ally’s father, servants and friends no longer recognising her but the bulk of it is simply about Ally in a different life trying to earn her way back to her old life. The screenwriters purportedly conceived of the film as a Cinderella story in reverse – where Ally starts as the princess and goes down the socio-economic ladder to become the maid.
Ally Seedy becomes the maid
Maid to Order is a fairly inane film. A good part of the middle consists of comic scenes with Ally Sheedy’s attempts to do the ironing going wrong, the vacuuming tearing down the curtains, the dishwasher causing the kitchen to overflow with suds, or she falling into the Jacuzzi. Dick Shawn (in his last role) and Valerie Perrine are played as comic Hollywood caricatures. Things comes together for an upbeat ending where the supporting characters get their wishes granted and Ally her old life back. There’s predictable romance between Ally and chauffeur Michael Ontkean.
The fadeout of the film is an interesting one – where the wish is lifted and Ally’s father Tom Skerritt recognises her again, at the same time as she stays in the house in her maid uniform and returns to the arms of love interest Michael Ontkean, where you cannot help but think that her living in two different worlds – as both maid and rich heiress – is going to present a number of problems.
