An Aggravatingly Generic Execution Of An Equally Generic Story Leaves The Devil Wears Prada Stumbling

Looking back on The Devil Wears Prada, it feels like some kind of scrapbook chronicling the pivotal career turning points for the many actors who starred in it. For Anne Hathaway, it cemented her as a person who could headline a financially lucrative movie that didn't have Princess Diaries in the title, something she's been able to prove again and again over the years. Meanwhile, Emily Blunt got put on the radar with her work here while veteran character actor Stanley Tucci got easily his biggest gig yet that was followed by an Oscar nomination and memorable performances in movies ranging from Best Picture winner Spotlight to Captain America: The First Avenger. And a little-known figure Meryl Streep achieved her biggest movie ever at the domestic box office at the time.


Considering how crucial The Devil Wears Prada was in the lives of these talented players, I wish I found the movie itself more enjoyable than I did. For the few of you out there that were like me prior to last night that hasn't seen this movie, the plot concerns Andrea Sachs (Anne Hathaway), an aspiring journalist who takes on the task of being the assistant to Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep), the editor-in-chief of the highly acclaimed fashion magazine Runway, in order to build up connections and work experience for a prospective journalism career. That task becomes far more work than she could have ever imagined since Priestly is....demanding, to put it gently.

Long time assistant to Priestly Emily Charlton (Emily Blunt) doesn't believe Andrea will be able to make it a week in this job. She turns out to be wrong though, as Andrea soon puts her nose to the grindstone and overhauls both her fashion sensibilities and work ethic in order to be the best possible assistant to Priestly. It isn't long before she's becoming quite adept at her job but that does mean the rigorous schedule of her occupation means she's losing her friends and boyfriend Nate Cooper (Adrian Grenier). But it's all gonna be worth it once she ascends to a higher position at work, right? That's totally gonna happen, right?

The more I think about The Devil Wears Prada, the more I hate myself for not enjoying it more. Heck, this thing's written by Aline Brosh McKenna, one of the two creators of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend! And also the writer of more generic films like Morning Glory and We Bought A Zoo, but she co-created Rebecca Bunch, that accounts for a lot in my book! Alas, The Devil Wears Prada was just not an outfit I could find all that comfortable to wear. That being said, it does have some solid acting and costume work to its name with the latter element helping to sell the idea that Runaway really is a place of elegant and unique outfits like no other that could cast a spell of obedience over new employees who walk through its doors.

As for the actors, well, just look at the talent assembled in the first paragraph. It's easy to see why Anne Hathaway cemented herself as a memorable leading man after her work here, Emily Blunt and especially Stanley Tucci lend one-dimensional caricatures some real life and Meryl Streep provides menacing work as the titular devil who wears Prada. The problems come in the fact that the movies weirdly inert at accomplishing either drama or comedy, two elements it should be able to conjure up considering it's supposed to be a dramedy. Instead, the attempts at jokes in The Devil Wears Prada (like a recurring bit where people keep calling Anne Hathaway's character fat) mostly fall flat, though Tucci gets to deliver some fun lines.

The attempts at drama are similarly middling, as the cookie-cutter plot just goes through the motions of a typical "Wide-eyed normal individual becomes the very type of person they used to hate" storyline without any sort of fun, invention or depth. One can tell where we're gonna end up in this story the moment Anne Hathaway walks through the doors of Runway and the journey getting there just has nothing to compensate for the suffocating amount of predictability. It doesn;t help that, aside from a recurring use of having the camera abruptly zoom in and zoom out of certain shots in a way that mimics the style of handheld camera filming, director David Frankel executes the predictable plot in a similarly derivative manner.

It's a real pity The Devil Wears Prada succumbs so badly to such rote plot details because there's real promise in here for either a funnier movie or a more dramatically engaging movie. The third act hints at more substantive content (like the gender-related double standards that could make people be particularly critical of a female editor-in-chief being demanding) that could have made for far more riveting cinema and only reinforce how hackneyed the dramatic scenarios in the final film are. I really wanted to love The Devil Wears Prada, but tragically, this one ended up going for a more trite story that ends up wasting a great cast on an overall middle-of-the-road movie that stumbles while walking on the runway.