Coping with a chipmunk

Rating: 5/10 (17 October 2006)

This extremely handsome but ultimately mediocre 'comedy' is like a poor girl's version of "Sex and the City", (where "Sex and the City was ballsy at best, this is insipid). It's a wish-fulfillment fairy-tale about the poor girl holding on to her integrity when she's offered the moon by the Devil herself, like Dorothy standing up to the Wicked Witch of the West, and it's virtually plot less. It's just a series of vignettes leading up to the killer-punch; the Ice Maiden melts, (a little), and Dorothy goes back to Kansas.
In the central role of Andy, the girl who doesn't sell her soul, Anne Hathaway seems to have one facial expression, (imagine a chipmunk trying to look sincere). She is goodness personified so you can't root for her because her future has been mapped out for you as soon as the movie starts. Instead you're drawn to the posh, dippy comedy caricature of a secretary played by Emily Blunt who is so good an actress she gives this pathetic character a kind of depth and she steals all her scenes.
The men, (Adrian Grenier, Simon Baker), are gorgeous and vacant. Grenier is the dark-skinned good guy and Baker is the blonde villain, (that way you can tell them apart). Stanley Tucci is in there, too, but he doesn't qualify as 'totty' because he's the token gay guy on the magazine. We know he's gay because Tucci plays him fey. It would be appalling were Tucci not so good an actor, (and what happens to him is pretty appalling).
As for the much vaunted performance of Meryl Streep, it's serviceable at best. Miranda can never be more than a cartoon character, a Cruella DeVille in nicer clothes. Streep eventually brings her to life but it looks like hard work, and she gets no help from the script which feeds her up stock situations until we are finally meant to empathize with her. (Can that be a crack in her armour? Is goofy-faced Andy finally wearing her down? In reality, Miranda would stab Andy through the heart with a stiletto). It's not a terrible picture and it's certainly not drab. Florian Ballhaus's, (son of Michael), brilliant photography ensures it looks expensive, but it's not funny, it's certainly not clever and when it's over you don't feel like you've seen anything at all.