“The Devil Wears Prada” is a pleasing and entertaining Hollywood concoction, and it’s good to see something (slightly) intelligent and (very) female driven can do so well commercially in today’s entertainment industry.
Anne Hathaway plays Andy Sachs, who wants desperately to be a serious journalist but can only get an interview at Runway Magazine, where she accepts a job as the second assistant to Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep,) the magazine’s notoriously steely editor in chief. The movie has a predictable arc that works despite the fact that we’ve seen it ten million times- Andy takes the job, hoping it will help her get another job in publishing, gets sucked into the world of fashion (and sports a ton of fabulous outfits, while the movie never explains how she can afford them- but, then again, it’s a fairy tale,) loses her friends and boyfriend, then realizes the error of her ways. It’s trite and obvious, but it works.
What elevates the film and makes it more than just another chick flick is the brilliant Meryl Streep. She owns every scene she appears in, outclassing her young co-star with even the subtlest gestures- when she raises an eyebrow, she can move mountains. Streep makes the movie more than worth seeing, and will probably be nominated for best supporting actress for both “Prada” and her stellar work in “A Prairie Home Companion.”
What makes Streep’s performance as Miranda Priestly work is the fact that she never once goes over the top. She doesn’t raise her voice once in the entire film. I’ve interned at places with notorious bosses who treat their assistants like dirt (and throw computers at them,) and expected the comedy to come from her outrageous behavior. But Streep never plays Priestly as an angry maniac- she’s always calm and composed- the better to seduce poor old Andy to the dark side. Streep is always sympathetic, and one of the movie’s most honest moments comes when Andy tells another character that Priestly doesn’t deserve her bad reputation- if a man acted the way she did, people would just say he was doing a good job.
By the end, Priestly does live up to her “dragon lady” reputation, destroying the careers of others to save her own, prompting Andy to walk away and redeem herself. She saves herself from corruption and decides to do something with integrity, not get stuck in the glamorous yet empty life that Priestly leads, and so on and so forth, blah blah blah. All of that is well and good, but honestly, I just wanted more Meryl. I’d rather see a movie all about Priestly any day- “the devil” is just more interesting than Hathaway’s angelic Andy.
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