Hollywood is not a place that likes to entertain two thoughts at once – one is sometimes enough of a struggle – but when “The Devil Wears Prada” became a best-seller, executives were faced with a conundrum.
On one hand, the book was a huge success, with plenty of promotion potential. On the other, it was a long complaint about a world of imperious bosses and poor abused assistants – a world that Hollywood rather likes, actually.
“It’s a very whiny book,” director David Frankel confessed recently. “By page 4, you’re wondering – well, if the job’s so terrible, why don’t you quit?”
It’s a good question, particularly for a filmmaker to ask. Nothing’s less attractive onscreen than watching people prettier than you moan about how hard it all is. But screenwriter Aline Brosh McKenna’s adaptation does a very smart job of turning Lauren Weisberger’s kvetching roman-a-clef into a clever summer movie.
The film is still set at the novel’s fictional Manhattan fashion magazine. But the witchy boss has lost her obvious Anna Wintour affectations, and her poor put-upon assistant has gained a sneaky pride about being able to fulfill her seemingly impossible demands. It’s no longer just a story about an awful job. It’s now a story about a job that’s awfully hard to do – and the seductive pleasure of learning you can do it.
As for the two very different Jersey Girls in the leads, they provide their own pleasures.
As the insanely difficult Miranda Priestly, Meryl Streep takes a cleverly thought-through approach, losing that character’s British accent and playing everything very quiet, very controlled. She never speaks quickly or raises her voice because she knows she never needs to, and it’s that absolute, imperturbably regal calm that makes even adults stammer in her midst. You know her power.
As the assistant, Andrea “Andy” Sachs, Anne Hathaway has the somewhat harder, subtler job of making this girl likable. At first, she has little to go on beyond her big brown eyes, and her working-girl travails racing about a never-looked-better Manhattan. But then you see the Stockholm Syndrome taking hold, and her eagerness for approval, not to mention all that free Chanel. You know her weakness.
Frankel, who has directed episodes of both “Sex and the City” and “Entourage,” draws on both experiences to this movie’s advantage. From “Sex,” he brings designer Patricia Field and an appreciation of the city’s romance. From “Entourage,” he brings the sweetly rumpled Adrian Grenier, who adds some sex appeal to the most thankless role in any chick flick, the Long-Suffering Boyfriend.
It’s all very light and pleasurable, and for fashionistas – or simply teens who grew up on, and past, “The Princess Diaries” – as fun as a sample shoe sale. Yet, like the original novel, “Devil” still doesn’t go quite deep enough. The title isn’t meant to be a reference to Miranda; it’s a warning about how elegantly appealing that soul-snatching demon can be.
For the movie to have a moral, the Faustian danger must be real. Yet what sins does Andy commit? She takes another woman’s big chance (but only after the woman can’t take it herself). She goes home with the Other Man (but only after she and her boyfriend agree to “take a break”).
She misses a birthday party because she unexpectedly has to work late. This isn’t selling your soul. It’s not even renting it out. The movie would be stronger if Andy’s fall were steeper.
But then no one wants to see a movie whose heroine really is a bitch. And no Hollywood executive wants to think that little assistant sharpening his pencil is fully capable of plunging it into his back.
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