The Devil Wears Prada
Fans of Lauren Weisberger’s novel of the same name will notice some marked differences between that work and this film. Sure, that happens with all movie adaptations from books, but I think the difference is significant enough that it starts to resemble someone else’s work entirely. Weisberger wrote a semi-fictional account of a job from hell she had with a major unnamed editrix but rumors abound as to the identity of that hellish boss. This movie declaws the written character of Miranda Priestly and gives her lead, Andrea Sachs, balls we never saw coming. As a result, book fans may feel a littlecheated.
That is not to say that anyone in any way gives less than a delicious performance. Meryl Streep’s silver-wigged Miranda is so deliciously cold-blooded that she teeters dangerously on the edge of camp; Streep keeps that from happening. Ann Hathaway’s Andrea looks the doe-eyed innocent and sexes up real good with the fancy pants later, but it’s her character that was reimagined so jarringly that I had trouble appreciating what Hathaway was doing. Stanley Tucci also studiously avoids camp in the role of Nigel.
The lack of camp is either what is best about the film or what is desperately wrong. At times the movie seems defensive about fashion as an industry, as if it would have lost all the incredibly expensive loaner wardrobe if it had dared to mock the superficiality and the cutthroat nature of that business. At other times the outfits are so horribly over the top and hideous that there is no way they were seriously trying to pull off she looks really good! Either the people need to be so over the top that we can better feel Andrea’s floundering, or they need to be so restrained that the choices they make actually make sense. I am sorry to say, I blame the screenplay or the director for defanging and backing down. I actually see people with more egregious senses of entitlement every day in my big, bad city; Miranda Priestly by and large makes relatively reasonable requests for a woman in her position (and some that are more funny than horrible). Not all, it is a movie after all, but more than I would have hoped.
I did enjoy myself - the many changes from the book’s plot kept me interested in what happens next, but midway through the movie (during a pivotal scene, sorry to say) I thought to myself, I could never see this again and be Ok with that. It’s a movie that balances work and life, paying dues versus selling your soul, but I never feel that the stakes get high enough for those choices to be in serious jeopardy. It’s worth seeing for Streep alone, or making fun of the clothes, but don’t spend too much money on it.
MPAA Rating PG-13
Release date 6/30/06
Time in minutes
Director David Frankel
Studio 20th Century Fox
