The Devil Wears Prada follows my own recent career path: a college journalism major from Ohio pursues dreams of working for a magazine in Manhattan. Like me, we know our hero, Andy Sachs, (Anne Hathaway), has little sense of style and is from the Midwest because of the opening montage, which shows her throwing on her Banana Republic and taking the subway to work—the subway for fuck’s sake—while all the other montage girls motor away in hired Lincolns or flag down suspiciously available and immaculate cabs.
The plot diverges from my life, however, upon the introduction of Meryl Streep as Miranda Priestly, the editor of the Vogueish magazine Runway. Against all odds, she hires Andy as her assistant and it’s made as plain as Andy’s wardrobe that the poor girl doesn’t know what she’s in for. If you haven’t heard, Miranda is the devil referenced in the movie’s title, a Cruella de Vil with a frosty gaze, a voice of whisper-sweet honey, and speech of solid snide. She leaves teeth marks all over the scenery and supporting cast.
Oh, the things she says, so cutthroat and mean-spirited. She is not to be questioned or trifled with. She mows down coworkers and colleagues with wicked asides and blunt putdowns. She asks the impossible of her assistants. (The other is played with exasperated British charm by Emily Blunt and has my favorite line of the movie, about her diet of eating nothing until she gets dizzy, at which point she allows herself “a cube of cheese.”) Miranda’s missions-impossible have Andy sprinting across the city, once to purchase a gourmet steak that ends up uneaten, another to procure a copy of the newest Harry Potter novel—so new it’s still in galleys—for the reading enjoyment of her bratty, redheaded twins.
Miranda evokes one of those acid-spitting horrors from Alien regurgitated as a queen-bitch fashionista. At least two of the gentlemen in my party remarked that the fashion sense, snarky dialogue and general fabulousness of the film were most appropriate for an audience of gay gentlemen. That does seem to be the case; there’s plentiful mockery inspired by Andy’s initially frumpy attire, particularly her blue, cotton-poly blend sweater and there was a big laugh over her inability to spell Gabbana. The clincher was not one but two Madonna songs on the soundtrack, one of which is “Vogue,” which I believe backdropped the necessary Cinderella-style wardrobe montage.
Runway’s swishy art director Nigel (Stanley Tucci), Andy’s colleague and confidant, instigates this makeover, and the audience knows the transformation is complete when it gets the requisite bottom-to-top tilt of her standing there in her haute couture. Now she’s hot and sports a bangs-intensive haircut, a Treo, a car service and, most importantly, confidence. Also, apparently, a lot more money than earlier in the movie, when she was bumming around her apartment in a Northwestern sweatshirt, eating grilled cheese sandwiches for dinner. She’s a woman aglow, like an actor in a shampoo commercial, and with renewed vigor tackles the demands of her beastly boss, basks in the nightlight of the Big City, beams Julia Roberts-wattage smiles, and allows for a fling with an apparently non-gay clothing designer (Simon Baker), who is as smooth and interesting as a sheet of Formica.
That the pure and naive Andy is gone forever, replaced by this girl from a Robert Palmer video, is realized most painfully by her live-in boyfriend (Adrian Grenier), who appears to be a member of the Strokes. He broods about how much she’s changed—and not in a good way. She spends too much time at the office and on her cell with Miranda, and not enough time with him, he suggests. But this seems petty and not a genuine concern of anyone who would actually work and live in Manhattan; you work as much as you must in order to afford that SoHo apartment, Fabrizio. Those lonely cobblestone streets you sulk upon at night don’t come for free, you know.
Tidily, Andy alienates her friends, too, even after plying them with swag from her job, including an ugly designer purse and a Bang & Olufsen phone that resembles a futuristic silver dildo. The movie’s plot hinges on Big Choices like these: work life vs. social life, self-promotion vs. screwing over a coworker, and good vs. evil, but they really aren’t choices at all. The characters, despite small variances, are hard-wired as archetypes. There’s no exercising the demons from Miranda, aside from a scene shoehorned in to show her beaten down and symbolic without her makeup, baring her soul briefly to Andy. Andy ends up learning Valuable Lessons from her year at Runway and handily secures a reputable journalistic job at a local rag. Everything’s back to the way it was when it started.
The Devil Wears Prada is a summertime trifle and a moderately entertaining diversion. I must award it at least a few stars or thumbs because, as you know, I dig this city and movies filmed in it. Prada makes this grade, even if its Manhattan is the scrubbed-till-it-glows edition seen in most Woody Allen films. I was especially amused to spot a scene taking place at Craft, where I had dinner on Monday, a coincidence recalling the one where I ate at Sea, then saw it depicted the same weekend in a scene from Garden State.