Review

Review Date: 2-July-06
Spoiler Rating: Medium
Juju Judgment: Just OK

The Devil Wears Prada (2006)

They say the devil is duplicitous, and I say “The Devil Wears Prada” is too. This is a drama — or is it a comedy? — that tries to win the viewer by seducing her in different directions at once. Believers in divine justice may rejoice that it fails in its diabolical plan. Hopeful moviegoers may feel disappointed.

“The Devil Wears Prada” is based on the real-life experiences of author Lauren Weisberger (filtered through screenwriter Aline Brosh McKenna), which may explain why it reaches for a narrative form. The heroine of the film, Andy Sachs (Anne Hathaway), is a recent college graduate who’s hired as second assistant to the editor of the fashion magazine Runway. Her boss is the notorious Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep), the serpent of the title who expects the impossible and takes no prisoners. At first Andy views her job as a sort of joke, a mere stepping stone to her dream of becoming a journalist. Yet as the weeks pass she becomes immersed in it: the clothing, the self-important posturing, and most of all, the necessity of catering to Miranda’s whims any time of the day or night. This change in her character strains relations with her live-in boyfriend (Adrian Grenier) along with other friends and family.

The crux of the story is of course whether Andy will give in to temptation and sell her soul, but at the same time it’s about the temptation itself. Andy’s potential fall is drawn out by scenes of her depleting the Runway closets (escorted by Stanley Tucci in a thankless role), traipsing around in a limo, flirting with a gorgeous reporter (Simon Baker), and strutting through the lamp-lit, rain-washed streets of Paris, images clearly meant to make the style-savvy or image-conscious ooh and aah. Inevitably someone as doe-eyed as Andy must return to her roots as a caring, polyester-clad Ohio girl in the end, but by gum, she’s going to live like a supermodel before she does! Hathaway doesn’t quite sell the cover girl or comic scenes, but she acquits herself nicely in the dramatic ones. Not surprisingly, the moments when the picture clicks are those when Streep is doing her thing, which includes blazes of cruelty and flashes of humanity beneath the scales. She alone gets away with demanding multiple responses at once.

“The Devil Wears Prada” isn’t a hellish time at the movies, but it ain’t Cinema Paradiso. In its shallow glamour it will fit some to a tee, but others will chafe at the fact that its message and motives don’t match.

Copyright © 2006 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.