Plot Details: This opinion reveals minor details about the movie's plot.

Glenn Close and Meryl Streep are two formidable actresses "of a certain age" (Close was born in 1947, Streep in 1949) who have won acclaim in an impressive range of roles. Each recently starred as a fashionable, successful, and devilishly demanding boss offering recent graduates (of law school and Northwestern University, respectively) fast-track jobs under them. The young women who go to work for these impossible bosses, Anne Hathaway as Andrea "Andy" Sachs in the 2006 movie "The Devil Wears Prada" and Rose Byrne as Ellen Parsons in the 2007(-) television drama "Damages" are smart and resilient and determined to succeed.

The young women who go to work for the she-devils at the top of their game professionally (Close's Patty Hewes in civil litigation, Streep's Miranda Priestly as the editor of the fashion Bible Runway) sacrifice having any life outside work to the demands of their bosses. Each has a boyfriend who is fairly supportive, but would like occasionally to have some time with her (Noah Bean as David Connor in "Damages," Adrian Grenier as Nate in "Devil").

"Damages" has an Enron-like class action suit (with Ted Danson playing the Ken Lay figure) and has a lot of fatalities. No one is killed or commits suicide in "The Devil Wears Prada," which is a comedy

Miranda is called a "devil" upfront in the title of the movie (based on a best-selling roman-a-clef by Lauren Weisberger, who had been an assistant to Anna Wintour at Vogue. Miranda is hard on her assistants nearly all the time. More insidiously, Patty sometimes makes herself seem like a human being with sympathies for and even interest in the life outside the office of her assistant. Patty also has any number of hidden agendas!

Suggestions by her that Miranda might be a human being who has felt the need to turn herself into a monster to succeed (in what is far less a "man's world" than huge class-action lawsuits) are rarer. Close demonstrated that she could do nonstop cartoonish villain as Cruella de Ville in 101 and 102 Dalmatians. Streep played the victim rather than the demon in "She-Devil," and has played vulnerable more often than Close has.

I thought that Streep's occasional glances out of her tough shell were very effective in "Devil." And I thought that she was very funny as the monster/devil of a boss. She musta been having fun!

And so did I, though I had little doubt that Andy would back out of selling her soul after having seemingly done so (like Faust in Goethe's version). I sympathized with the boyfriends' finite patience in both "Devil" and "Damages" (and enjoyed seeing Adrian Grenier being charismatic in a movie, increasing his credibility as a movie star in "Entourage). I thought that Stanley Tucci's Nigel was too much like Carrie's stereotypical gay friend in "Sex in the City," but that he provided some charm. The more baroque and original turn by Zeljko Ivanek opposition lead counsel Ray Fiske on "Damages" strikes me as far more interesting.

Hathaway did what she needed to do to make Andy relatively believable and sympathetic. She's playing Cinderella, so there's not much challenge to winning sympathy. (It is chilling that she is called "fat" repeatedly by the senior assistant to Miranda, ably played by Emily Blunt: the anorexia-inducing standards are best captured in Tucci's saying "{Size] Two is the new four, zero is the new two.") I thought that Hathaway's fine performance in Brokeback Mountain was overlooked when passing out plaudits for it. She has a much larger role in "Devil," but doesn't do anything particularly memorable with the screen time.

Making Miranda somewhat sympathetic is a greater challenge, but we already know that Meryl Streep is a great actress and are not very surprised that she rises to the challenge (of providing nuance and even sympatheticness to the cartoon character; there might also appear to be the challenge of comic timing, but in the rare opportunities she has had to show she has that, Streep had already proved that). I think, however, that the script makes it less of a challenge to wrest some sympathy for Miranda than it should be. Miranda is nasty and demanding, but she does not have anyone committing crimes (cf. Patty Hewes). Miranda wants a very high level of competence, an assistant who will anticipate what she wants. Workaholism is necessary but not sufficient.

Having just returned from Paris a few weeks ago, I enjoyed the valentine to "the City of Light." I have no idea whether the world of fashion and fashion magazines is like what is shown in "The Devil Wears Prada." It is like that world as shown decades ago in "Funny Face" and "Designing Women," and I knew what Prada means from watching "Sex in the City." "The Devil Wears Prada" entertained me and made me smile. I gather the books portrays a more vicious world than the chick-flick adaptation does. The movie's director, David Frankel, directed episodes of "Sex in the City," which may explain the similar look and similar obsession (only slightly satirized) with (product) labels... and the punch-pulling. And much of the haute couture in "Devil" and "Sex" was designed by Patricia Field.

I was not sufficiently enamored with the pleasant-enough experience of watching the movie to delve into the many DVD bonus features.


Recommended: Yes

Viewing Format: DVD