Movie Review: The Devil Wears Prada

By Anne Brody Jun 27, 2006, 2:04 GMT

In the dizzying world of New York fashion, where size zero is the new 2, six is the new 8, and a bad hair day can end a career, Runway Magazine is the Holy Grail. Overseen with a finely manicured fist by Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep) ­ the most powerful woman in fashion ­ Runway is a fearsome gauntlet for anyone who wants to make it in the industry. To ...more

‘The Devil Wears Prada’ marks a return to sophisticated social comedy, an old-fashioned and elegant riff on jumping one’s social level and the monsters one meets at the top.

Andy (Anne Hathaway) is a well-meaning, aspiring journalist hired to assist Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep), the legendary witch editor of ‘Runway’ (‘Vogue’?) magazine.

Andy doesn’t look like someone who belongs in the fashion world, let alone the world’s most influential magazine. Outfitted in plain Jane shirts, sweaters, hangdog hair and clunky shoes, she is alarmed to see every single colleague is perfectly coiffed and designer clad and wearing completely impractical stilettos. To wear clunky shoes is to beg to be fired.

And that is before she meets the Dragon Lady of Runaway magazine.

Priestly wants things, including appearances, just so in her tightly wound world.

Even so, she allows that she likes the new ‘smart, fat girl’. Andy is a size 6. Nigel (Stanley Tucci) Priestly’s second in command warns her that size six is the new size eight.

Nevertheless, even after seeing Andy and sizing her up as hopeless, Priestly hires her.

Priestly is widely believed to be based on Vogue editor Anna Wintour, the infamously cold control freak in charge of the legendary fashion magazine.

Author Lauren Weisberger worked for Wintour for a year, and detailed the brutal ‘glamorous’ life in her book of the same title.  Weisberger says she was a glorified Starbucks and steak fetcher, and expected to produce the latest Harry Potter galley for Priestly’s twins, months before publication. And that’s not the half of it.

Wintour turned the other cheek and attended an early screening in Manhattan, and called the film ‘amusing’. The book was translated into 27 languages and stayed on the New York Times bestseller’s list for six months.

The film feels like a depression era girl-makes-good story. Our poor but honest heroine finds herself in an extravagant, glamorous but perplexing world. She is suddenly part of it, whether she likes it or not.  Will she change, sell out and become one of them?

And as in those great old movies, the clothes, shoes, purses and accessories are enough to knock a girl out cold.

Thus the source of the film’s tension. Will she succumb to the Devil of Greed and Vanity? Will the soul-killing snobs she meets change her?  Will she fall in love with designer duds and risk it all for them, like her office mates? The chorus is always singing the refrain ‘a million women would kill for this job!’ Yet, Andy’s miserable.

The boyfriend accuses her of abandoning him for Priestly; her parents are horrified that she sends them emails from the office at two in the morning. Friends are starting to wonder where the old Andy went.
Culture shock is a common reaction in young people entering the work force for the first time; it is a universal passage.

But for Andy, it’s out of the dorm and into the dog-eat-dog elite fashion-dictating world. That’s a coat of a different color from the rest of us.

The film veers from the book in an important area in that it is often tender and revealing. It allows us into the source of Priestly’s relentless anxiety.

Streep is close to perfect in the role. Her authoritative yet breathy monotone is all about artificiality, and forces silence from those around her. Her clothes say volumes before she even opens her mouth – they are severe and close to military.

Hathaway has handled fish out of water stories before, and ‘Devil’ is not so far from ‘Princess Diaries’ or ‘Ella Enchanted’. She is talented and experienced and does a good job as Andy.

Every film has a scene-stealer and it’s Tucci, who delivers vicious zingers, without conscience and with gusto. Even he has a tender moment.

‘The Devil Wears Prada’ is the ultimate summer chick flick and I predict a boost in sales of Prada, Starbucks and of course, Vogue.

Opens wide USA June 30th MPAA: Rated PG-13 for some sexuality