Wardrobe malfunction

Rating: 2/10 (4 May 2009)

Sorry, not my cup of meat at all, to paraphrase Dylan, a chick-flick based on chick-lit - obviously this was my wife's choice for our Saturday night movie! That said, I really did sit down and try to give the movie every chance to entertain me, I mean I love US TV sit-coms which accomplish comedy by presenting likable characters in humorous situations with quick-fire dialogue and, yes, even gags but this flashy empty so-called rom-com scored zero out of three on that scale.
Instead all I saw was a product placement paradise, so much so that I don't doubt the constantly name-checked contributors probably met the full budget for the film! Impossible you may say to make a film about the fashion magazine business without advertising every other fashion house (was Prada the highest bidder, I wonder?) and magazine chain, but it was so in my face and obvious that it distracted from the fare on the screen.
The characters were all cardboard-thick (the oxymoron is deliberate) caricatures, Meryl Streep getting her "Analyse This" make-over to zero effect and Anne Hathaway improbably transformed from geeky, kooky pleb to a made-up, power-dressed woman of today. The characters are too over-exaggerated, not helped by everyone over-acting for all their worth and the plot situations too obviously contrived, despite the true-to-life locations. Hathaway's character, for instance, the (I hesitate to use the word) epicentre of the film and the gal we're all meant to root for, loses all empathy and sympathy with the audience by betraying her ordinary average guy fiancÃ© for a one-night stand with Mr hunky, career-assisting super-journalist in glitzy Paris! I'll just accept that I'm obviously way too far out of the demographics here for the film to connect with me, but, despite being way over 40, happily married and living in Scotland, I still got "Friends" a sit-com about single 30-somethings in New York...
A movie as facile and empty as the world it seeks to further glamourise.