THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA

by Joe Barber on Jun.30, 2006, under Joe Barber's Movie Reviews

JOEâ€™S MOVIE REVIEW: “THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA”

Meryl Streep delivers a wonderfully wicked performance in “The Devil Wears Prada.” Based on the best selling novel by Lauren Weisberger, the film offers a sharply drawn look behind the designer clothes and stylish tantrums of the fashion world through the eyes of one young journalist discovering the industry while working on her forst New York job.

Streep is Miranda Priestly, the icy, imperial editor in cheif of “Runway” magazine, the top fashion magazine in the U.S and, perhaps, the world. She eats assistants the way most people gobble popcorn, so when Andrea “Andy”

Sachs (Ann Hathaway), fresh from an award winning college journalism career, somehow ends up at Miranda’s desk, seeking a job, things don’t look good. But something about her gets Miranda’s attention and she’s hired.

Though Andy needs the job and values the experience it gives her, she faces a number of problems. She doesn’t read fashion magazines, finding them shallow. Moranda’s top assistant, Emily (Emily Blunt) and Miranda herself, insult and belittle Andy’s judgment on everything, from clothes to coffee, while both women have her doing the most menial of tasks.

Hard work at all hours of the day and night and style advise from Miranda’s art director Nigel (Stanley Tucci) begins to lift Andy out of the doghouse and into the inner circles. Soon, he’s enjoying the insane hours, the power and the people and ignoring her friends and aspiring chef boyfriend, all of whom shared her contempt for the shallowness of the fashion and publishing worlds. Temptation to the dark side rears its head in the form of a connection with a successful writer who likes Andy for more than her writing and a crisis involving Miranda.

Streep’s ice queen of a boss has many of the film’s best lines and delivers them with relish. She’s the boss everyone loves to hate. Yet she’s also brilliant, farsighted and passionate about what she does. Director David Frankel and screenwriter Aline Brosh McKenna set her up to shine and she does, as do Tucci and Blunt.

Hathaway shows promise in this, her first true adult role following her “Princes Diaries” breakout films. Her Andy is a heroine to root for. But McKenna and Frankel fail to draw enough dark ambition out of Hathaway to make her possible flip to ruthlessness totally believable. Passionate fashion lovers will find plenty of tid bits to enjoy, from clothes and designers to bits of detail about “Vogue” and its legendary former editor Anna Wintour, on whom Miranda and “Runway” are loosely based.

While the movie walks a fairly familiar path, “The Devil Wears Prada” does so with so much style and sass-and Streep-that it’s a great deal of fun to watch.

MPAA RATING:PG-13 for profanity, brief nudity and sexual situations.

JOE’S RATING: