A Solid Comedy-Drama Where Streep Shines

Rating: 9/10 (22 January 2019)

2 July 2006. It's very difficult nowadays to produce a comedy without the usual stereotypes and The Devil Wears Prada must negotiate a very delicate balance between comedy and drama and popular audience attention and critical serious film-making. This movie does well in managing this dangerous terrain of high fashion and the usual cliques. The soundtrack was among the most amazing musical selectons and worked effectively with a highly powerful energizing musical score with the script and action. Meryl Streep as well as Ann Hathaway are great in their interplay while Director David Frankel manages to maintain the fine line of avoiding exaggerated melodrama while allowing the actors to carry the more subtle humorous undertone. Yet Meryl Streep and the script carries the movie with its biting, edgy character and the typical outcome is much more a question of tone and feeling than obvious, overt, and crassness (to which she was nominated for Oscar's Best Actress). Just as the world of high fashion, ironically, the hyper-energy, the highly powerful personalities, the rapid pace is brought successfully to the screen. Streep creates a richly, colorful character while Ann Hathaway manages to provide a more subdued but as strong and quiet a character in transformation but not overthetop. The only weakness of this movie is more one of having to address popular audiences and profits wherein the movie may have had to avoid a more hard-hitting even sharper dramatic edge. Even so, The Devil Wears Prada is a classic comedy drama that is compelling, entertaining, and rich in its characters. It is an almost perfect blend of music, set design, intelligent script, and acting that together combine to create a movie that worth seeing again and again for the sheer creative, fluid emotional outburst of comedy and drama. Nine out of Ten Stars.