Very disappointing, easy populist ending

Rating: 6/10 (29 December 2006)

The positives...Well, of course Meryl Streep was excellent as always. Even when you can fit her character loosely into a stock type, in this case the Boss from Hell, she manages to add something that's all her own. But Meryl's a given, so we'll move on.
One good thing a movie can always latch onto is when it gives you a behind-the-scenes look at a world that most people don't really know much about but for which a lot of us have stereotypes or preconceived notions. In this case, the world of high power fashion. This kind of thing especially works if it's a world that most of us probably view negatively and I'm guessing most people reading this probably think New York-Paris-Rome high fashion is silly, wasteful, pointless, and even insidious. (and not without reason).
But the ending here...utterly predictable and very disappointing. I guess we're supposed to cheer that our heroine came to her senses and refound her soul and set back on her course to do Good Honest Work among Good Honest Regular Folks. Very safe, very bankable ending. I had been extremely impressed up until the last reel that this was becoming a film about making hard choices and *especially* about letting life unfold for you, despite your best planning, what might be your true authentic calling (or true self) even though it was politically incorrect according to your old peer group, and even though you resisted it and it put you out of your comfort zone at first.
I enjoyed seeing Andy go through her changes at Runway, and to me her old friends looked more and more childish as Andy continued to grow. (Naturally one of those friends was a Sincere Artist.) Of course, clearly we were supposed to be sympathetic with them -- they were the "old gang" that Andy, in her "blindness," was gradually losing touch with.
Instead of a fresh take on real character growth, a fresh take on a life's-journey sort of picture, we got the lowbrow, comforting failure ending: Oh it's okay, Andy, you can always come back to us, your real family. We's just simple folks, but we's sincere. This is the sort of ending that caters to people with sour grapes resentment toward, well, successful people.
Question: Why did the director et al. go to such great lengths to surprise us with the recognizably human feelings and frailties of the Runway gang only to then make it supposedly a good thing when Andy "escapes" them?
Absolute worst line I've heard in a movie for some time: The idiot boyfriend (I think his name was Dharma Bum, can't remember) at the end, in the restaurant. Andy says something like, gee, I left behind my original dream for...and the boyfriend finishes her sentence by saying "Shirts. Pants. Purses. Belts." Or something to that effect. In other words, Andy sold here soul for Mere Material Possessions. Thus sayeth Guru Baba Rum Raisin. (And this dude, by the way, had just announced that he has a job as a major chef in a high-powered Boston restaurant -- gee, no career ambition there, eh?).
Actually a fine film except for the final ten minutes.