Streep plays devil's advocate in fashion-industry morality tale

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Friday, June 30, 2006

Streep plays devil's advocate in fashion-industry morality tale

By WILLIAM ARNOLD
P-I MOVIE CRITIC

By some fluke of good taste, Hollywood has cast Meryl Streep in no less than three movies this summer.

MOVIE REVIEW

THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA

DIRECTOR: David Frankel

CAST: Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway, Stanley Tucci

RUNNING TIME: 109 minutes

RATING: PG-13 for some sensuality

GRADE: B-

LINKS/TRAILERS
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She's already on the screen in Robert Altman's "A Prairie Home Companion," and she'll be in the CGI-animated "The Ant Bully" on Aug. 4.

In the meantime, she has one of her most eagerly awaited roles in years playing the grand dame dragon-lady editor of a New York fashion magazine in the adaptation of Lauren Weisberger's best-selling novel, "The Devil Wears Prada."

It's an extravagant, showy, broadly conceived role but, instead of chewing the scenery with it as we might expect, she has chosen to underplay the part, making the title character more human and less scary than she's supposed to be.

The bad news in this kinder, gentler, more subtle performance is that, by playing the woman as less of a devil, the dynamic that propels the story loses much of its drive and energy, and what's left is a kind of high-class "Gidget" movie.

The heroine is Andy Sachs (Anne Hathaway), a frumpy young recent Northwestern graduate who goes to New York and gets an unlikely job as the second assistant to Miranda Priestly (Streep), the editor of a Vogue-like magazine that's the fashion-industry bible.

Miranda is the boss from hell, and Andy has serious journalistic ambitions and absolutely no interest in fashion. But, even though everyone on the magazine treats her like a pariah and wants her to quit her impossible job, she decides to stick it out.

Gradually, she rises to the challenge and the movie becomes both a Cinderella story, as Andy is transformed into a fashion-plate and workhorse; and a morality tale, in which she must decide between her "good" values and the "bad" values of workaholic corporate America.

The movie has a lot going for it: a privileged look inside the world of fashion journalism, a magical interlude in a storybook Paris, bright supporting performances by Stanley Tucci and Emily Blunt, the likable presence of Hathaway, and, of course, Streep.

But, as credible and fine-tuned as it is, Streep's less intimidating characterization doesn't quite have the teeth it needs; and Hathaway, who enters the movie looking like Miss Teenage America, seems miscast as a character everyone seems to think is overweight and homely.

Moreover, the movie's satiric element is so thin that it's practically non-existent. Early in the story, Streep gives Hathaway a lecture on the dignity and importance of the fashion industry, and from then on the business seems as vital as firefighting or cancer research.

So the morality tale makes no sense. In the end, the movie is one more stale Hollywood warning on the dangers of overwork at the expense of family. And since Andy's "family" is her whiny, dull, self-pitying fiance (Adrian Grenier), who cares?

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