The Devil Wears Prada (2006)

The discovery that Aline Brosh McKenna's adaptation of Lauren Weisberger's roman-a-clef, The Devil Wears Prada, marks McKenna's fourth big-screen credit (she authored Three to Tango (1999), Laws of Attraction (2004) and If Only (2004)) may astound the viewer, for McKenna's script for Prada is so laden with errors that it suggests a first-year screenwriting student's flaw-filled excuse for a last-minute draft. Aspiring screenwriters should attend this film and take notes on which mistakes to avoid - mistakes so brazenly obvious that we can count them as they fly out and whonk us on the head. Given the level of talent in the cast, and the obvious comic intuition of director David Frankel (a key contributor to the ere-inspired Sex in the City), an A-list feature with this pedigree can claim no valid excuse for such ugly fallibility and bald klutziness. The core of the problem: McKenna fails to establish Andie's (Anne Hathaway) motivations clearly at the film's outset. (We wonder why in the hell Andrea would bother applying for a position in a field that she doesn't seem to give a whit about, so limp and pathetic is her application speech to prospective boss Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep). McKenna establishes the reasons behind Andie's decision to apply during an over-dinner dialogue between Andrea and her father. But it arrives almost thirty minutes into the picture. (How can we actually be expected to root for Andie if the scripter, for almost half an hour, withholds the vital information that the girl is a freelance writer, who hopes to network her way from an entry-level magazine assistantship into the hearts of established authors who contribute to the publication?) No matter - for if this strains credibility and erodes our patience, the film enters the realm of the ludicrous when it has Andie rejecting an offer by prospective-suitor Christian Thompson (Aussie thesp Simon Baker) to put her in touch with an editor from New York Magazine who could make all of her dreams happen with a snap of his fingers - Andie evidently turns Thompson down just so that she can head home to celebrate the birthday of an oversexed boyfriend, Nate, whom we have seldom seen and honestly could care less about. (The film's tone falls to pieces at this point; it will elicit howls and catcalls from any viewer who has seriously aspired to a writing career and grasps the preciousness of Thompson's offer). Innumerable other elements contribute to the film's absolute destruction of plausibility (Andie's ten-minute transition from butterfingered, latte-juggling secretary to telepathic whiz girl as a product of her instant wardrobe change; her ability to suddenly, without substantial explanation, fund a million-dollar wardrobe that would make the board of execs at Neiman Marcus blush). But ultimately, the film is too shallow to succeed because McKenna and Frankel reduce it to a two-dimensional, pseudo-leftwing parable on the ills of "selling out" to capitalism, like a bastardized feminine reworking of Oliver Stone's Wall Street. And the picture doesn't seem to believe what it preaches: it handles its tone so maladroitly that, by its messy (and hopelessly confusing) denouement, we may find ourselves siding with Streep's character and wondering how in the world Andrea could be such an idiot by walking away from her career. Hathaway ushers in a soft and luminous screen presence, but Streep's throwaway performance as the icewater-veined Priestly gives her too little screen time. Most impressive is Stanley Tucci, who, as a soft-hearted gay employee of the magazine and Hathaway's mentor - wins us over immediately. He suggests manifold levels of depth with only a handful of scenes. And when he receives the shock of a lifetime at the picture's conclusion, the expression on his face not only sings a mournful elegy to the lack of justice in this world, but says more about the heartlessness of the fashion industry than anything else in the picture. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide