The Devil Wears Prada
Studio: 20th Century Fox
Rated: PG-13
Cast: Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway, Emily Blunt, Tracie Thoms, Adrian Grenier
Director: David Frankel
Screenwriter: Aline Brosh McKenna
Music Score: Theodore Shapiro
WorkNameSort: Devil Wears Prada, The
Our Rating: 3.50
In its portrayal of a fresh-out-of-college, plainly dressed journalism student (Anne Hathaway) who takes a secretarial job under a tyrannical fashion-magazine overlord (Meryl Streep), The Devil Wears Prada is to the cutthroat world of chic glossies what Swimming With Sharks is to the movie business: a satirical indictment of its industry, with naive lackeys serving as the spectator’s surrogates through the glitzy abyss. Prada is much smarter, though, revealing depth of character and tough moral dilemmas befitting the literary adaptation it is. If the film’s streak of Frank Capra idealism and predictable test-audience structuralism may ultimately soften its cynical core, the devil of the title is in the details culled from real-life humiliation and drudgery: the unfathomable tasks and impossible requests, the ring tones that have never sounded so damning and intrusive, the contemptuous stares that say more than words. Most of these moments of truth are provided by the inimitable Streep, who, following her endearing turn in A Prairie Home Companion, once again reminds us there’s nothing she can’t do.
This article appears in Jun 28 – Jul 4, 2006.