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| Devil Wears Prada, The |
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  (7/10)
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Runtime: 109 |
| Public Rating: 9.00 (21 votes) |
Director: David Frankel |
MPAA Rating:  |
| Genre: Comedy/Drama |
Year: 2006 |
| Writer(s): Aline Brosh McKenna, Lauren Weisberger (novel) |
| Distributor: 20th-Century Fox |
| Reviewed by: Mel Valentin |
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Based on Lauren Weisberger's roman à clef about her experiences as Anna Wintour's assistant at Vogue and directed by David Frankel (Entourage, Miami Rhapsody), The Devil Wears Prada is a lightweight mix of comedy and drama, predictable from start to finish, but nonetheless enjoyable for its acerbic, biting dialogue, a dizzying, fetishized array of fashion brands, obvious stabs at the vanity, egotism, and materialism of the fashion industry, and watchable acting turns by Meryl Streep and Anne Hathaway. What The Devil Wears Prada doesn't have is subtlety or anything meaningful to say about the fashion world or the magazines that cover fashion.
Fresh out of college, Andrea “Andy” Sachs (Anne Hathaway) applies for and gets the second assistant position to Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep), the difficult, demanding editor-in-chief of Runway magazine. Miranda's first assistant, Emily (Emily Blunt), and her photographer, Nigel (Stanley Tucci), treat Andrea with derision, openly mocking her lack of fashion sense and disinterest in learning more. For Andy, working at Runway is only a stepping-stone to serious journalism work, hopefully with The New Yorker. To get there, Andy has to survive one year as Miranda's assistant, a near impossible proposition, given Miranda's penchant for chewing through her assistants.
Andy's live-in boyfriend, Nate (Adrian Grenier), initially supports Andrea's desire to survive the year as Miranda's assistant and advance her career, but doubts begin to creep in once Andy begins to appreciate and indulge in the perks of her job: free clothes and accessories. With Nigel's help, Andy goes from frumpy to glamorous, something Nate and Andy's friends, Lilly (Tracie Thoms) and Doug (Rich Sommer), appreciate until Miranda's incessant demands (Andy's seemingly on-call 24/7) threaten their relationship. Andy also meets Christian Thompson (Simon Baker), a famous writer who takes a romantic interest in Andy.
Andy has several to choose between her personal life and her professional life, with, presumably, her personal integrity in the balance. Along the way, the other characters reflect the possibilities Andy has to choose from. Emily's drive and ambition make her selfish and uncompassionate, but it's Miranda who represents Andy's possible future: wealthy, successful, respected but ultimately unloved. Miranda is slowly revealed to be flawed, imperfect, having failed in her personal life. Once exposed, Miranda's personal failures are meant to soften and humanize Miranda from the Cruella de Vil caricature she initially appears to be.
For the most part, it works, but altering and softening Miranda's character causes other problems, story wise. The Devil Wears Prada loses momentum in the third act, as Miranda moves front and center and Andy is left in the margins to decipher the backroom politicking that could change everything and does. Andy's essentially relegated to a minor character that has to be told what happened via flashback. Making Miranda less a caricature and more a flawed, sympathetic character probably helped in getting Meryl Streep to take the role and, while admittedly it was a smart business move, it also feels calculated and manipulative (because it was and is).
Combined with several scenes depicting Miranda's newfound humanity, the change in focus makes Andy less compelling, primarily because we can predict what choices Andy will make, what consequences they'll have for her, and their relative lack of importance (i.e., she might lose her job, maybe an opportunity or two, but not much else). Andy's character arc involves some hard-won, if obvious, self-realizations about work and relationships, it's hard to see how Andy isn't and won't be seen by moviegoers as naïve and immature. Not to mention that the filmmakers decided to illuminate the film's themes and subtext for moviegoers through repetitive dialogue.
While the fashion world is often rife for satire (if, in fact, it isn't already parodying itself), The Devil Wears Prada zeroes in on Will & Grace-style putdowns about Andy's physical appearance that, while initially, if painfully, funny, also push Andy into accepting conformist norms about feminine beauty (she does and apparently we do too). Giving the role of Andy to the naturally photogenic Anne Hathaway (Brokeback Mountain, The Princess Diaries) didn't hurt, of course, making her transformation from “ugly duckling” to “beautiful swan” easier to accept. But openly challenging preconceived ideas about feminine beauty or women in the workplace might have been expecting too much from a film that, ultimately, has so little to say.
© Mel Valentin, 30th June, 2006
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