Salt Lake Tribune Review
Meryl Streep, like a Chanel suit or a Tiffany bracelet, is a timeless classic who always looks good - and she makes "The Devil Wears Prada," an otherwise off-the-rack comedy/fantasy of a single gal making it in New York, look like a million bucks.
Streep plays imperious fashion-magazine editor Miranda Priestly, who (according to Streep in many interviews) is absolutely not like
Anna Wintour, the legendarily imperious Vogue editor for whom Lauren Weinberger - who wrote the 2003 best-seller on which the movie is based - worked as an assistant. (Weisberger also denies that Wintour is the sole inspiration for Miranda.)
Streep's Miranda is, as the title suggests, the well-dressed boss from hell. She demands the impossible, expects perfection, punishes error and never praises good work. She is a tyrant who can bring assistants to tears with one derisive comment and can force a designer to remake his entire spring collection just by pursing her lips.
Enter Andy Sachs (played by the always charming
Anne Hathaway), a smart and hard-working J-school grad who catches Miranda's eye because she's a couture calamity - an anti-fashion snob in clunky shoes and sensible sweaters, a size 6 in a size 2 world. But when Miranda dresses her down with a lecture on how haute couture trickles down to Casual Corner (a clip you'll see accompanying Streep's next Oscar nomination), Andy decides to brush up on her style, aided by Miranda's patient art director Nigel (
Stanley Tucci).
But as Andy's outer style improves, her inner life shrinks. She starts to outclass the assistant who hired her, the catty Emily (
Emily Blunt). She starts to alienate her scruffy boyfriend (
Adrian Grenier) and finds herself attracted to a suave free-lance writer (
Simon Baker).
Director
David Frankel is a veteran of HBO's "Entourage" and "Sex and the City," and he creates the same glossy, isn't-it-fabulous-to-be-us? look here. He can't do much else with the thin script by
Aline Brosh McKenna, which essentially tries to stretch the opening credits of "The
Mary Tyler Moore Show" to a feature-length plot. The one behind-the-camera talent who truly earns her paycheck is costume designer Patricia Field, who keeps the characters clad in the latest and sometimes strangest styles.
Streep's take-no-prisoners performance tellingly and hilariously reveals the many shades of Miranda's unerring belief that the universe can, and should, revolve around her. Even when Frankel and McKenna let her down by trying to soften the character, Streep scores by staying true to Miranda's deliciously devilish self.
-- Sean P. Means
The rundown: Meryl Streep shines in this comedy as a fashion-magazine diva who is the boss from hell.
Synopsis: In the dizzying world of New York fashion, where size zero is the new 2, six is the new 8, and a bad hair day can end a career, Runaway Magazine is the Holy Grail. Overseen with a finely manicured fist by Miranda Priestly--the most powerful woman in fashion--Runway is a fearsome gauntlet for anyone who wants to make it in the industry. To make Runway the fashion bible of New York and therefore the world, Miranda has let nothing stand in her way--including a long line of assistants that didn’t make the cut. It's a job no self-respecting person can survive, yet it's an opportunity a million young women in New York would kill for. A stint as Miranda's assistant could blast-open the doors for recent college graduate Andy Sachs. More college drab than haute couture, she stands alone among the small army of Clackers on staff at Runway--superslim fashion divas clacking their stilettos down the halls of the magazine's Manhattan headquarters. But when Andy comes in for the job, it dawns on her that making it in this industry will take more than drive and determination. And her ultimate test stands before her in head-to-toe Prada. Miranda can spin the fashion world like a basketball but has a devil of a time finding and keeping a good assistant. Andy is completely wrong for the job. But she has something the rest of them don't: she refuses to fail. To become the perfect assistant, Andy will need to make herself over in Miranda's image. Soon, much to her boyfriend's dismay, she can talk the talk, walk the walk and never again confuse Dolce with Gabbana. But the more of life she sees through Miranda's eyes, the more she begins to grasp that Miranda's world is a fabulous but lonely one--and that sometimes great success depends on great sacrifice. But at what cost?
