indi

THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA
New release DVD
Directed by David Frankel
Starring Merryl Streep and Anne Hathaway

Young college graduate Andy Sachs (Anne Hathaway) unable to find work in her chosen field lands a job as personal assistant to the notoriously difficult Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep). Priestly, the brains and style behind Runway Magazine, is a woman who insists upon being pleased and working for her is no easy task.
Andy is a self-confessed fashion ignoramus and must negotiate her way through the cut-throat, bitchy, soul destroying world of high fashion. After a series of fashion faux pas Andy slowly becomes more and more obsessed by this new world, shedding her personal ethics one by one, until a terrifying glimpse into her future makes her stop and look at what is really important to her.
This film, of the highly successful novel by Lauren Weisbergers, is uniformly disappointing, with one exception; Streep is brilliant from beginning to end. Her characterisation of this savvy, paradoxical, vindictive woman is flawless, as we would expect from an actor of her calibre. She injects just enough vulnerability to complete the portrait and makes Miranda utterly believable.
On the other hand, the casting of Anne Hathaway left me wondering. Looking like a young, beautiful Liza Minnelli, Hathaway sadly brought none of the pathos or self awareness that Minnelli would have found necessary for this role. Her acting choices were boringly predictable and at no time could I invest in the character or care about her fate. The bitchy comments about her weight, style and looks from her co-workers, were incomprehensible as she appeared as skinny and beautiful as any of them. So in terms of physical suitability to the part perhaps a Christina Ricci type would have been far more appropriate.
Fellow co-stars Stanley Tucci and Emily Blunt did little to raise this film above the dizzying heights of mediocrity and were as outclassed by Streep as actors, as they were as characters.
On the whole, THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA is not the searing expose` of the fashion industry that it would like to be. It has none of the tongue-in-cheekiness of a Pret-a-Porte or classy photography that you would expect from a film about the fashion elite. We are no wiser about the machinations of the fashion industry at the end than when we started and the film basically boils done to a fairly trite “nice girl stays nice” morality story.
Despite one or two beautifully written put downs, expertly delivered by Streep, this film, with its over-loud sound track, fails to be Haute Couture.
I give it 6 out of 10. (four of which belong to Ms Streep)