Cinematography a delight for the eye

Rating: 8/10 (4 July 2006)

The cinematography is beautiful both of The City and the fashions. Manhattan hasn't been so lovingly displayed since Woody Allen.
Meryle Streep turns Miranda Priestly into a three-dimensioned and complex character, not the flat evil persona of the original novel. Streep has never looked more elegant with small waist and arched back. She gets some inspired lines of dialog. It's hard to believe this is the same woman who played a frumpy housewife 11 years ago in Bridges of Madison County. Miranda Priestly will become a classic character of the cinema like Cruella de Ville long after the movie.
Anne Hathaway plays Andy Sachs, the bright and eager journalism-school graduate in preppy sweaters skirts who wants to be a journalist, but takes a coveted assistant's job fetching Starbucks to her icon boss, whom she hadn't even known before the interview. That's the easy part of the job, balancing four grandes in a cardboard holder. To Andy falls several Herculean tasks as well. Hathaway's conversational style, wardrobe and body language changes, but she tries to be in that rarefied fashion world, not part of it. Occasionally Miranda lets her know she is pleased, but Andy loses her personal friends, who don't see the distinction. (She's already experienced indulging the whims of her self-absorbed boyfriend who sulks if he feels he's not getting enough attention. Miranda is only a few notches above him.) In the end Andy has to decide whether she is willing to let herself be absorbed by a way of life that sacrifices people for the cause of art and ambition.
Stanley Tucci as Nigel, one of Miranda's deputies, is serves as a mentor to Andy. Adrian Grenier,Simon Baker, and Daniel Sunjata are some very eye-catching hunks in contrast to the estrogenic environment.