The Devil Wears Prada (2006)

Originally Reviewed 

Wednesday December 13, 2006

I was surprisingly looking forward to watching this after so many raving reviews from follow movie reviewers. Now after watching it, I'm quite surprised so many people thought it was worthy of such high scores. The Devil Wears Prada is nothing new, in fact it’s an imitation of so many films of the past... I guess that would make it "Prado" then. If I'm supposed to praise a film that takes conformity, career achievement and alienation of friends and relatives, when it doesn't bring anything new to the table then I guess I just don't get it. Although I find it entirely ironic that a film surrounded around an industry that prides itself on always being new and the "it", is actually quite old and recycled.

Andy Sachs (Anne Hathaway) is looking to break herself into the career of journalism, the problem is she doesn't have many options to begin with. She ends up at Runway, a fashion magazine where she doesn't fit in, knows entirely nothing about fashion but happens to be completely different from the company's prior victims that the fashion queen Miranda Priestly's decides to hire her as her new assistant.

She quickly learns that simply showing up and working isn't going to secure her the job for very long. Miranda is very demanding and everyone caters to her every whim no matter how ridiculous or impossible, when she says run, they're out the door so fast there's no time for them to ask how fast! Wanting to keep this job in hopes of it leading the opportunities in the industry she's more interested in, Andy decides to do whatever it takes to fit in and win over Miranda's approval.

Eventually Andy becomes Miranda's new "Emily" and it doesn't take her long to get the routine, the look and the demeanor down, and all the while completely put her personal life on the back burner. Soon Andy has changed so much that she can barely recognize that she has turned into the same group of people she was once criticizing only months ago, now the question is does she have the guts she once had to say no, and get her original life back?

I wasn't feeling this film, it wasn't horrible but at the same time it was nothing close to the hype I've been hearing from a lot of reviewers. The film stays constant throughout but never gets better or worse, and therefore feels very mundane and repetitious. I have seen the geek to sheik, work-a-holic, conformity films so many times that this one surprised me so much because it didn't even try to throw a wrench in the gears and mix things up a bit.

The best comparison I can make to this film is Mean Girls; these films are so similar that this could aptly be the sequel. Dorky girl, seeks to fit in and succeed by changing her image, she succeeds in doing so and in the process pushes away family and friends for a bunch of shallow anorexic twigs....sound familiar? And even more coincidental one of those little twigs gets hit by an automobile as well!

So The Devil Wears Prada is pretty much the older sister of the much more entertaining Mean Girls, which I might add had a much more attractive cast of nasties. While The Devil Wears Prada isn't a complete bore I did find myself looking at the clock way too often as the story seemed to move way too slow and ultimately go nowhere. The acting was alright, Meryl Streep played the haughty Miranda well, but ultimately I had a hard time believing an editor of a big fashion magazine is going to be that sullen and quiet. Anne Hathaway was alright, personally I think she is overrated and not even very attractive with makeup on, but she did a descent job in playing the role even though nerd to fashion queen isn't really an entirely new role for her, more of a safe role.

In the end, The Devil Wears Prada was descent; I wouldn't watch it again because there are so many films exactly like it that are better, shorter and funnier. Maybe had someone like Rachel McAdams filled the role of Andy I might have enjoyed it a little more, but ultimately the story didn't hold my attention, it was too predictable and consistently too much of the same to be memorable at all. I think a lot of people got suckered into a cheap imitation instead of the real thing. 

5/10