Film Review: The Devil Wears Prada

I love movies. I love clothes. And because I don't watch enough reality TV shows to have an unhealthy dose of schadenfreude in my life, I love stories about evil bosses who receive their comeuppance. So I was, of course, dying to see The Devil Wears Prada. I am a girl after all.

My lady friends who were lucky enough to have attended advance screenings or rushed to the theater on opening weekend all had the same reply when I eagerly asked them about the film. "It was really good," they all said down to a woman the apologetically added, "It was just a bit of fluff, but it was fun."

So I went to see The Devil Wears Prada, expecting nothing more than a cool glass of ice tea on a hot summer's day. What surprised me was how simultaneously witty and profound the film was. It's full of brutally funny moments, a villainous boss you love to hate (Meryl Streep deserves every superlative she's received for her performance; in the end credits she's even billed above Anne Hathaway), a wide-eyed heroine you can't help but root for, a cute boyfriend, plenty of witty repartee, the requisite makeover scene (which is to me what catnip must be for cats) and of course, plenty of eye candy in the form of absurdly stylish threads. But far from a fatuous orgy of couture, The Devil Wears Prada is actually a profound exploration of what it means to be a powerful woman.

I haven't read the book, but the general consensus is that the film vastly improves the original roman-a-clef, a formulaic tale about an evil boss at a fashion magazine whose cruel treatment of everyone around her, specifically her neophyte assistant, leads to her humiliating comeuppance. All praise to screenwriter Aline Brosh McKenna, who has taken the boilerplate narrative of a wide-eyed innocent corrupted by the bright lights of the big city and transformed it into a nuanced study of the price women often pay for success, a toll that's usually far heavier for women than for men.

Andy Sachs (Anne Hathaway) begins the movie with ambitions of becoming a "real journalist," the kind who writes about janitors' unions and homeless children, but she ends up working at fictional Runway magazine. The grand dame of the magazine, editor Miranda Priestly (supposedly modeled on Anna Wintour of Vogue, where the writer of the original novel once worked), is demanding, capricious, controlling and downright cruel. She's also brilliant. Even Andy, who goes from deigning to work at the magazine to excelling at her job, finds herself defending the boss she once loathed. "If she were a man," Andy says, "Nobody would care about any of this. All they'd talk about is how brilliant she is."

Thanks to McKenna's screenplay and Streep's performance, the movie provides a thorough critique of the notion that fashion is somehow less important than any other industry while infusing the Heartless Careerist Bitch archetype that dates back to Mildred Pierce with some much needed humanity. Plus, it's super fun to watch -- until the finale.

For nearly 100 minutes, the movie questions and subverts all sorts of clichés, and then in the last 10 minutes it caves in and reaffirms them. I don't want to give away the ending, but what was framed as a cathartic personal triumph for Andy instead came off as a saccharine thematic conceit. As long as you leave 10 minutes before the end, The Devil Wears Prada is an excellent film.

Of all the new releases I've seen this summer, it is still the most entertaining. So why the qualified enthusiasm? Why do all of my female friends feel they need to apologize for enjoying this movie? Everyone needs a little trash in their lives, and if that's all this movie was, it would still be a raging success. But The Devil Wears Prada digs deeper than that. It's a shame that ingrained cultural perceptions relegate movies like this to the cinematic equivalent of the chick lit ghetto.

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PS-Bjorn says, "Is it just me or does Anne Hathaway look like a bloated fat pig in those size 6 dresses? I'm glad Stanley Tucci was there to point out her flaws and help her improve her self-image through ridicule."