Film
The Devil Wears Prada
- Director
- David Frankel
- Certificate
- PG
- Running Time
- 109 mins
There’s nothing hacks enjoy more than talking shop, which is probably why this adaptation of Lauren Weisberger’s chick-lit roman a clef enjoyed such extraordinary publicity in advance of its release back in 2006 . Can there be anyone left in the English-speaking world who doesn’t know that Miranda Priestly, the imperious ‘dragon queen’ who keeps her quivering fash mag underlings in a state of perpetual terror, is allegedly based upon Vogue editor Anna Wintour? Meryl Streep sure gives the full Cruella as this monstrous fashionista, and there are strong supporting turns from Emily Blunt as her snooty first assistant/gatekeeper and Stanley Tucci as a refreshingly non-mincing token gay art director. But anyone expecting a vicious satire on this most fatuous of industries may be surprised to find that the story itself is such a feeble, toothless, formulaic piece of fluff about an idealistic young girly who’s so corrupted by the world of designer clobber that she risks losing both her soul and her cardboard stubbly boyfriend unless she undergoes a last-reel Hollywood epiphany.
Disturbingly wholesome Anne Hathaway is keen young Andy Sachs, a college graduate from the sticks who dreams of writing for The New Yorker but winds up instead as an assistant’s assistant to tyrannical Priestly, editor of ‘Runway’ magazine. At first it’s hell, despite the constant reassurance that this is the job a million girls would kill for. Senior flunky Emily (Blunt) is a snide, insecure bitch, and Priestly is so withering and unreasonable that Andy’s frequently reduced to tears. But then pitying Nigel (Tucci) takes her under his wing and gives her the full Pretty Woman treatment, which, as so often with fashion makeovers, leaves her looking much less attractive than she did as a ‘frump’. Then the drippy boyfriend (Adrian Grenier) observes that she’s turning into the women she despises.
Labouring beneath a ferociously sculpted hairdo, Streep is terrific as the snobbish and condescending Priestly, whose impossible demands include a copy of the latest unpublished Harry Potter manuscript for her spoiled brats. Trouble is, everyone involved seems to think we should be equally interested in the travails of boring Andy. Worse, the film wants to have it both ways – wallowing in the world of designer labels on behalf of the aspirational target audience while affecting a principled disdain for its superficiality.
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