James Rocchi At The Movies

'Devil Wears Prada'

Review By CBS 5 Film Critic James Rocchi

3 Out Of 4 Stars

(CBS 5) Andy (Anne Hathaway) is a young Midwestern striver, fresh out of Northwestern journalism school, armed with a fistful of earnest clips from the student paper. Looking for a job in journalism in New York, she settles for a job as the second assistant to Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep), the brilliant, brittle editor-in-chief of Runway magazine, the Bible of high fashion.

Andy's not the best prepared person for the job -- New York Magazine publishing's a bit fast-paced for her, and her fashion sense is a bit lacking. One co-worker cattily asks out loud during Andy's first day " … are we doing a 'Before and After' piece I don't know about?" But Andy will … not … quit, which puts her in a unique position to learn from Miranda. The question is,
what will she learn, and what will that cost?

Based on Lauren Weisberger's best-selling novel, The Devil Wears Prada is a glossy good-time movie, thanks in no small part to Hathaway's charm and Streep's skill. After years in ten-friendly fare like The Princess Diaries and Ella Enchanted, Hathaway is nicely poised to play a young woman poised on the brink of adult decisions, while Streep plays Miranda (based none-too-opaquely on real-life Vogue editor Anna Wintour) with the hill, thin smile of a proud, competent and occasionally cruel taskmaster. Part of the film's charm is in watching Streep deliver frosty put-downs from the great height of Miranda's
position -- as in an early scene where she traces the couture genesis of the cerulean blue off-the-rack mass-produced sweater that Andy's wearing, and how the color of what she wears was determined years ago by the people she's in the room with. …

The Devil Wears Prada was directed by David Frankel, whose credits include the similarly glossy Sex and the City and Entourage for HBO. There are a few visual flourishes here -- a seemingly-seamless montage as Andy shows off her new wardrobe acquired form the storage closed of Runway's photography director Nigel (Stanley Tucci, filling a small role with big charm), who acts as Andy's mentor and guardian angel. As Andy gets more and more used to the Runway world, though, she starts alienating her friends with her always-on-call ways and buzzy social flitting. Andy starts becoming Miranda -- the film portrays the shift as something like Stockholm Syndrome in a sheath dress -- until even her chef boyfriend (a fairly invisible Adrian Grenier) calls her on putting style over substance, while accepting that he's not exactly the best man to call her on it: "I make port wine reductions all day … I'm not exactly working for the Peace Corps."

Aline Brosh McKenna's adaptation of Weisberger's novel has plenty of snappy moments like that, even if Frankel can't quite get the film up to the level of NYC-cynicism that you find in a classic like The Sweet Smell of Success or Ted Heller's Manhattan magazine novel Slab Rat. But Hathaway manages to put a nice movie-star spin on her role, and Streep's icy, imperious performance makes for delicious viewing; if you're looking for light summer entertainment that doesn't feature car
racing, super-humans or sword fighting, The Devil Wears Prada is tailor-made to satisfy.

-James Rocchi

(© MMVI, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)