The Devil Wears Nada

As I absolutely loathed the book, I was kind of surprised at myself when I found that I was excited to see the movie version of The Devil Wears Prada. After one aborted sold-out attempt on the film's opening weekend, blogger Red Sauce and I finally caught it this past Friday.

While not nearly as reprehensible as the book, the movie is still fairly annoying—Meryl Streep, Emily Blunt, and Stanley Tucci aside. I had hoped the film would show the Lauren Weisberger character to be just as irritating as she comes across in the book—a whining child of privilege, upset at having to fetch some fashion bitch's coffee when anyone could see she'd be much better suited to writing "thinky" pieces at the New Yorker. Yeah, right. But instead, the directors opted for hiring the aggressively bland Anne Hathaway to portray a spunky gal with a heart of gold. Barf.

Hathaway has approximately two different facial expressions and both of them made me want to hit her in the head with a bottle, so in that way she was true to the book. Adrian Grenier plays her boyfriend, proving once again that while he's easy on the eyes. . .

he should probably start thinking up another day job. Which is a shame, because I've seen him act onstage twice and both times he was amazing. But neither the small screen ("Entourage") or the large screen seem to bring out anything more than a blank leadenness in him. Yawn.

In a truly gag-inducing cliché, Hathaway's character comes complete with both a sassy black friend and the obligatory gay boy.

The atmosphere at the women's mags rang pretty true, but the journalism crap had me choking on my popcorn. Blech. All in all, not a painful waste of time, but a waste of time nonetheless.

Comments

[MissPinkKate]

I think the character did come off as really annoying, although she wasn't supposed to. She spends the whole movie learning why and how her boss is succesful, and then chucks it at the end to run back into her boyfriend's arms and work at a "real" paper. Whatever.

[rose]

anne hathaway's portrayal was truly vapid and annoying and not on purpose. one other thing that annoyed me was that her friend was all excited to enjoy the pricey purse she got her and then turned on her at the end. damn. it was a film of bad messages and the fashion was not even that good. i wish we could have read those clips about the janitor's strike or whatever that was...

[la_depressionada]

yes the author was a poor employee. i would have fired her. one thing i did like about the movie is that, probably the work of some knowing costume designer or art director, it slipped in that little diatribe about the cerulean blue sweater -- sort of excellent deconstruction, so derrida, but who's chicer: NOBODY! -- in an otherwise formulaic, derivative and ultimately uber-american fable.

[val]

You realize that Anne Hathaway grew up in Short Hills, and won some young actors award for her high school performance of something cheesy (can't remember) at the Papermill Playhouse in Millburn. But go ahead and trash your homegirl if you must.

[Judy]

Val, recall if you will, I'm from the other side of the tracks—the mean streets of Millburn! And you know as well as I do that she would've been mean to us if we were in school with her.