I didn't know what to expect from The Devil Wears Prada, Actually to be honest I expected not to like it very much at all. I'm not a huge fan of Meryl Streep, sh's an amazing actress and the movies she's in are usually very good, but I'm just not a big fan of her being in those movies. I thought The Princess Diaries starring Anne Hathaway were too childish and didn't have enough going for them to make them enjoyable to older audiences. However, in The Devil Wears Prada I found everything I'd been wanting to see from these two actresses. I found their talent to be better exhibited, their expressions more subtle and inline with the story, and the dialogue to flow perfectly. Added bonuses were the actors and actresses that surrounded these two lifting their performances up even higher.
Andy Sachs (Hathaway) is fresh meat at the top fashion magazine in the biz and she has absolutely no idea how or why she got the job. Supposedly it's because she's less beautiful than the other applicants and will thus work harder, or so her secretary mentor Emily (Emily Blunt) would have her believe. Andy must struggle to find the pace in the frantic, chaotic, never-ending office of Miranda Priestly (Streep) the goddess of fashion. At first, as is expected Miranda gives Sachs no shortage of criticism, work, and despair. Andy is on call at all hours and must sacrifice whatever she's doing to heed Miranda's beck and call? Why does she put herself through all this? Because supposedly once she has completed a job with Miranda, she can get a letter of recommendation to work at any publication in the city country without possibility of rejection. That's how powerful Miranda Priestly is.
So, Andy slaves away learning the tricks of fashion, the nuances of Miranda's emotions and the cutthroat world of fashion and publication. Is there no light to guide her way? Of course there is!! Nigel (Stanley Tucci), Miranda's #1 man who happens to have a soft spot for her and guides her through the snares of Miranda's temper and encourages her in her darkest hours. Unfortunately for Andy, this help will only keep her sane, it won't do anything for her relationships which inevitably suffer at the hands of her 24/7 on-demand status. Andy loses touch with her family, becomes distant from her closest friends and even her boyfriend. In fact, she falls so far away from her boyfriend that there's enough room for Christian Thompson (Simon Baker) one of the top writers to get inside Andy's psyche and become a possible love interest. You can't blame the girl; he does help save her job with Miranda during a rather amusing process of attaining the unattainable.
The ups and downs of Andy Sachs captivate the audience even as they can tell Andy exactly what she's doing wrong. An added insight in the film, is that we get to see the full transformation of Andy from a naive girl with very little experience in the real world to an experienced businesswoman Andrea who while she dislikes what she's becoming revels in the new identity the job has given her. We get a firsthand look at what happens when we let out lives get away from where we are comfortable with them being.
As I've mentioned, Meryl Streep's standard level of acting is nothing less than superb, but in The Devil Wears Prada she excels and performs marvelously as "the boss from hell". She has the most subtle way of releasing confidence-shattering remarks in a way that only Meryl Streep can.
This movie marks the coming of age of Anne Hathaway's acting career. She has stepped out of the comfort zone of yuk-yuk Disney movies and moved into a position to be one of the more talented up-and-coming actresses of the next generation. Honestly, forget what you know of her in The Princess Diaries, she has turned over a new mature side and hopefully she'll indulge herself in more films that allow her to fill out this persona.
If I didn't mention that Stanley Tucci is one of the highlights of this movie, I would have erred horribly. Tucci is that bright light in Andy's dismal world and keeps her afloat at the worst times. Tucci is endearing and quite funny as the ambiguously-sexually-oriented Nigel and worthy of nomination for supporting actor.
No matter what your opinion on fashion, see this movie. It is funny. It works on many levels and the characters are well developed, catch this one in the theaters while you can.
"The Devil Wears Prada" opens June 30, 2006 and is rated PG13. Drama. Directed by David Frankel. Written by Aline Brosh McKenna, Lauren Weisberger. Starring Adrian Grenier, Anne Hathaway, Emily Blunt, Meryl Streep, Simon Baker, Stanley Tucci.
