The Devil Wears Prada is based on Lauren Weisberger's kiss-ass-and-tell roman Ã? clef about working for editor-in-chief Anna Wintour Ã?' Nuclear Wintour, they call her Ã?' at Vogue magazine. And although the movie's better than the book, it's also softer and vaguer. Weisberger, who was Wintour's personal assistant for 10 months, offered little more than a screeching catalog of the fashion maven's crimes against humanity. ("You call this coffee?" Ã?' that sort of thing.) But director David Frankel and scriptwriter Aline Brosh McKenna have actually tried to come up with a reason why one of the most powerful women in the world would treat the help with regal disdain. It's because she's one of the most powerful women in the world, dummy! When men do it, they're called leaders. When women do it....
Anne Hathaway, looking like she just got through scribbling in The Princess Diaries, plays Andrea Sachs, an aspiring journalist who winds up as a gopher for Meryl Streep's Miranda Priestly, a woman who knows exactly what she wants (say, the unpublished manuscript of the next Harry Potter book) and when she wants it (yesterday). That might have made for some glorious encounters as our ashen-faced Cinderella, due for her Extreme Makeover, adjusts to life inside the palace. But the movie doesn't really give these two the chance, locking Streep's Miranda in an ice palace of her own. Streep looks great, her waist cinched to within an inch of her life, her hair an impossible shade of silver. And she's acting up a quiet storm, softening her voice for an E.F. Hutton effect. But the character never takes off. It's stranded on the runway.
That leaves us with Hathaway, who has neither the acting chops nor the Audrey Hepburn charm to pull off this role. And it leaves us with Stanley Tucci as Nigel, the magazine's art director, who has diva dreams of his own. Tucci manages to put his lines over, so the script may not be the movie's biggest problem. From Funny Face to Ready to Wear, movies have never really "gotten" the fashion industry. Meanwhile, television, from "Absolutely Fabulous" to "Project Runway," takes us to the very heart of the beast. Given its source material, The Devil Wears Prada could have been an enjoyable romp through a world most of us know only from magazines like Vogue. Instead, it's as earnest as Wall Street, only with frocks instead of stocks.
