The Devil Wears Prada

The Devil Wears Prada was based on a novel written by Lauren Weisberger in 2003, and both stories made a name for themselves within the ‘’chick flick’’ genre, but also in the fashion scene as well. The story about a young woman being mentally punished while she works for a powerful fashion magazine editor had enough strength to function as a successful novel, but it was considered a great idea for a movie even before the manuscript was fully finished, as 20^th Century Fox bought the rights to the story and wanted to bank on this working for a film version. With both sides collaborating to wrap it up and after a surprisingly difficult filming process, the movie graced its audience in 2006 and led to a picture that definitely left an impact on its audience. In the fast-paced streets of New York, aspiring journalist Andrea ‘’Andy’’ Sachs (played by Anne Hathaway) finds herself with a ‘’once in a lifetime’’ job opportunity when she lands the job of junior assistant to Miranda Priestly (played by Meryl Streep), the editor-in-chief of Runaway magazine who is known for her incredibly high standards and remorseless attitude towards everybody. Having no love for the fashion industry, yet working for the queen of it, Andy slowly gets beaten down by her boss and her senior assistant, Emily (played by Emily Blunt) as she is tasked with constant difficult tasks and is met with minimal to no respect once she completes them, and this spirals her into becoming obsessed with succeeding in this job, while ignoring her personal life and boyfriend Nate (played by Adrian Grenier) in the process. As the work continues and the stress keeps coming, she’ll have to decide, is it all worth it? The movie’s reception was mainly positive, grossed $326 million against its rather small $4 million budget, and was nominated for several awards and even two Oscar nods, but arguably its biggest success was with how popular it was among casual moviegoers, with many still praising the film to this day, especially Meryl Streep’s performance. So does this movie hold up as more than just another ‘girl’s night’ flick.

The entire movie (and in essence the book) is shaped around the real-life experiences that the author experienced within her first job for esteemed editor of fashion magazine Vogue, Anna Wintour (who is believed to have inspired the character of Miranda Priestly herself). With this in mind going into it, it offers up a new perspective of tarnishing the glorified environment of the fashion industry and highlighting the real damaging consequences that come with working in such a demanding avenue. From perspectives of professionals that work in the business, the movie does do a good job at capturing the true struggles, and this cut-throat nature proved so striking that actual fashion designers and people in the industry were scared of having any part of the movie in case they evoked the wrath of Wintour. Because of this pre-established awareness, it allows the movie to go a little cynical in nature and this provides a serviceably decent amount of comedic possibility that focus around torturing this poor woman for no other reason other than she’s ‘’not up to standard’’, and it feels like Lauren Weisberger as well as screenwriter for the film, Aline Brosh McKenna, understand the comedic potential that comes with this idea. The director of this movie, David Frankel, was known previously for his work on Sex and the City and Entourage, and that energy and atmosphere associated with those products definitely transitions into this type of movie. While the movie doesn’t technically feel too much like a ‘’chick flick’’ in terms of the familiar cliches, it’s hard to deny that it doesn’t follow a similar rhythm to those movies, which includes a basic story outline that is pretty bland on paper and doesn’t really work that effectively for this type of narrative (telling someone to not become obsessed with their work isn’t as effective when the job actively demands this kind of attention). Its a situation where the rose-tinted glasses that the genre exudes isn’t as effective in something that has fun calling out something for being cartoonishly harsh despite being real. The movie adopts a mostly enjoyably cynical opening; with the mocking of the stereotypes and over-exaggerated demands of the fashion world, but this unfortunately transitions into a mostly unlikeable cynical final act; with romance drama that furthers nothing, character moments that feel either cliched or pointless, and the harshness exhibited on the main character is so overblown and so hypocritical that it stops becoming fun and just becomes unpleasant. It doesn’t have anything interesting outside of the fashion angle to hold onto after the cynicism stops being clever, and it makes the movie less enjoyable because the focus doesn’t feel concrete and when it is, its confused and doesn’t know what direction to follow.

The characters are equally as one-note as the initial plot outline is. While a character like Miranda definitely got people turning heads because of how similar she was in spirit and presence to Anna Wintour (especially Wintour’s herself), the rest of the cast are just as much cookie-cutter stereotypes for this type of movie, and they really don’t have much to stand on because of that, outside of the performers truly doing their best to work with what they have. Anne Hathaway has proven she can play this type of stock female ‘’plain to pretty’’ type of character many times before (almost to the point of it feeling like a gimmick) and she does it perfectly fine here as well. Emily Blunt’s stuck up and brown-nosing nature does get a decent giggle every once and a while, but outside of that, most of the other side characters are very forgettable or just used as place holders; the romance is especially boring as there’s no chemistry between the actual couple (it also feels incredibly manipulative and wrong that he is against her ruining his life for her job, then expects her to do the same for his job at the end), and the other guy/possible creeper played by Simon Baker just makes for a lot of uncomfortable scenes that don’t really attribute anything. Stanley Tucci plays an art director for the firm who can carry his scenes well enough due to Tucci being a decent talent, but he doesn’t really have many funny lines or too much of a relevance on the plot, so he is mostly forgettable. The only role that stands out (unsurprisingly) is Streep’s role; with her quiet yet controlling demeanor creating a character that is very easy and likeable to hate and while she is written as pretty inconsistent (the movie forgets whether or not we need to like her or not come the end of the movie), she is the only role that is going to be remembered for this movie.

For a movie that is all about stressful work and overbearing expectations from a business that doesn’t really warrant it, it makes sense to not only make it about fashion (which wouldn’t be the first choice when picking a industry that has about as much strictness as the mafia) and also to set it in New York; where the bustling streets, packed lanes, large amount of stores and colorful people works in heightening the already stressful situation the character is going through. While the city isn’t shot very specially, the quick montages the movie uses for some of these exercises work pretty nicely in a place that literally feels cramped and overworked by nature. For a movie about fashion, the movie would be home to a fair share of clothing, but strangely not as much as you would expect from real designers, as they also feared the responses they would get from Wintour if they were caught in a movie that was objectively vilifying her. Overall, the costume design by Patricia Field is good quality for this type of movie but doesn’t feature anything that overtly striking or memorably distinct (which is a shame for a movie about the importance of fashion, but it will just depend on the viewer). The movie also suffers from the rom-com cliché of ‘’never knowing when to turn off its music’’ as this film has constant background music or score throughout the entire thing and it can get a little annoying at times. Having a soundtrack with popular current songs and having a lively score is fine, but when it feels like it never takes a breath to stop, it just becomes too much.

For something that doesn’t feel like it offers a lot, The Devil Wears Prada is a perfectly fine popcorn film to watch when you just want to turn your brain off. It thankfully isn’t quite as insultingly generic and blandly written as other movies of its type are, as it at least has good performers, a joyfully mean-spirited half of a movie, and enough of a realistic uncovering of a high-end business which offers some interesting context, but its other elements are still pretty generic and don’t do a lot for said movie. The cliches and tropes drag the movie down, even resulting in a pretty unlikeable third act, most of the characters aren’t that interesting, and outside of highlighting the pros and (but mostly) cons of the fashion industry, it’s a pretty shallow film that somehow decides to bash people that overwork and under-work at the same time. Mixed thought processes aside and while still questioning how this movie was really in the Oscars (Meryl managed to find a way to get another one), decide for yourself whether this movie is one that you’d like to check out.