The morals of the movie are best left a secret as to not give away the ending, but I can say that their fairy tale ways help reduce the damage that the lack of surprises and the deficiency of a complex plot do to the The Devil Wears Prada. It is obvious where the feature film will take its characters from the vast number of other flicks with similar designs. Everything that happens seems to lead back to the same place many movies before this have. Still, one can hope for something out of the ordinary, chiefly because the movie’s villain is so Byzantine.
I am sure that said villain, Miranda Priestly, was written very well but I believe that most of the credit belongs to the fabulous Meryl Streep. Streep has played a large variety of roles in the past. She can also currently be seen (and heard) in A Prairie Home Companion. However, the role of Miranda is something particularly different for Streep. The actress not only gets to play mean, she gets to play evil. Streep usually gets to look glamorous but she has never looked so fashionable. Miranda is made very animated by Streep while retaining a certain amount of veracity.
The Devil Wears Prada introduces audiences to Andy Sachs, a college journalism graduate played by Anne Hathaway. Andy has a nice group of friends and parents that love her but she hasn’t quite landed a job yet. Hitting several dead ends in New York, she finally walks into an interview at Runway, the nation’s leading fashion magazine. The position Andy hopes to fill is that of the second assistant to the magazine’s editor, Miranda Priestly (Streep). Miranda’s first assistant, Emily, played by Emily Blunt, greets Andy but scoffs at the idea of her working at the fashion magazine. When Miranda arrives, she has the same attitude, noting that Andy has “no style or sense of fashion.”
Despite all of this, Andy’s strong personality wins her the job. She doesn’t fit in with the rest of the staff, though, so she enlists coworker Nigel, played by Stanley Tucci, to increase her chic. This works on the exterior but Andy must still learn how to meet Miranda’s impossibly high demands without sacrificing her own previously established values. Andy’s friends and family begin to play second fiddle to her professional life but she is determined to stick with it because the achievement could mean a position at any paper she so chooses.
The entertainment in The Devil Wears Prada really depends on the actors’ performances. I’ve already mentioned how Streep works her magic on the role of Miranda, but it must also be known that Blunt and Tucci give it their all and shine. Blunt’s Emily is the perfect assistant to Miranda and acts as the ideal anti-friend to Andy. Tucci’s Nigel is constantly funny and eventually becomes the character the audience cares about the most. This is a bad thing for Hathaway, who, for all intensive purposes, should have been the star of the movie. She is overshadowed by Tucci, Blunt and especially Streep. Then again, Hathaway’s Andy is not too much different from the actress’s breakout role as Mia in The Princess Diaries.
Still, The Devil Wears Prada is one of the best comedies of the summer. It is not strictly for fans of the novel that it is based on. It is not just for women. It is not only for those pursuing their own career in journalism. Rather, the movie is for anyone ready and willing to laugh, learn and remember the good time for years to come.
That’s all.
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