On the weekend of June 30, after I had overcome the euphoria of watching Superman Returns a couple days before, I decided to swallow my pride and see another chick flick (the last one I saw was The Break Up). Although I didn’t like the last one, I had high hopes for this. The previews for The Devil Wears Prada looked funny, and I felt that I could relate to it since I’ve had my share of bad bosses and crummy jobs over the last several years. For the record, this job is not one of the crummy ones.
In The Devil Wears Prada, Andy Sachs (Anne Hathaway) is a naive journalism major, fresh out of Northwestern University, who manages to land a job that millions of girls would die to have. The bad part, though, is that this job is the second assistant to Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep), editor-in-chief at Runway Magazine, in New York City. Miranda is a vicious perfectionist who bears a striking resemblance to Cruella DeVil. The only difference between Miranda and Cruella is that Miranda never raises her voice or loses her cool, which actually makes her somewhat scarier. She gives people lists of impossible tasks, belittles them when they don’t get them done, and piles on more jobs after that. And everyone wants to work for her?
Andy lives with her boyfriend, Nate (Adrian Grenier), and they hang out ever weekend with their buddies. They live in a small apartment, and Andy still dresses like a college student. Since Runway is the biggest and most important fashion magazine in the world, everyone who works there feels the necessity to to look down upon those of us in the world that aren’t skinny and stylish. Before Andy got the job, she had no idea about anything fashion related, let alone Miranda Priestly and her publication. She befriends Nigel (Stanley Tucci), the magazine’s fashion director, who warns her not eat corn chowder because it contains cellulite. When Andy informs him that she wears a size six, he says, “oh, that’s the new fourteen.”
In this cutthroat world of anorexia and Botox, Andy learns the ropes, gains a new wardrobe and loses a dress size, but in the process, her friends—and especially Nate—move to the back burner, and she begins to turn into Miranda. She has to decide between the fast-paced life of going to fashion shows in Paris and dating a rich journalist named Christian (Simon Baker), or the more enjoyable life with hamburgers and Nate.
The movie has its entertaining moments, but it was a tired old story that couldn’t decide where it wanted go and it didn’t want to take any risks. It was simple and predictable all the way through. The book by Lauren Weisberger (which I will probably read now) was a bestseller for six months, and I’m curious to find out what the filmmakers did to it. If the book sold millions, I have to believe that it was changed dramatically. It resembled the teen movies in which a nerdy girl moves into town and the cool kids are mean to her for no reason and she ends up showing everyone how cool she really is, and then she has to decide if she wants to join the cool kids or stay with her nerdy friends. I though Anne Hathaway was trying to break away from movies like that. I suppose a it wouldn’t be too bad if it were made for teenagers, but The Devil Wears Prada is supposed to be a movie for grown-ups, and it stars Meryl Streep and Stanley Tucci.
Although the story didn’t meet my expectations, I have to hand it to Meryl Streep for playing her part to the fullest. She’s nasty and vicious in a quiet, sophisticated way, and she avoids making Miranda into a caricature. She’s been nominated for mores Oscars than anyone, and it shows. She and Anne Hathaway recently appeared on “The View,” and Hathaway said that Streep was so convincing in her role, that she even intimidated everyone off-screen. Yes, I watched “The View.” It was for research, since I knew I’d be watching this movie. I swear.
The other actors also performed well and the characters were endearing. If only they had a different script to work with. The film is rated PG-13; it contains foul language and some adult situation. However, it would probably make for a good Friday-night date movie. I give it a solid three bees. I think I’ll go watch something with Chuck Norris now.
