The Prodigal Daughter

Rating: 10/10 (1 April 2015)

Watching "The Devil Wears Prada" is one huge pleasant experience. I thought I would end up cutting my wrists since it seems like a typical girl movie with her boyfriend featuring dilemmas like "does he love me or does he not?", but no. This film doesn't bother us with boring issues like that, it says much more.
The delightful and friendly Andy Sachs (Hathaway) is an ambitious young lady who just got hired from Miranda Priestly (stunning Merryl Streep), the editor-in-chief of a high fashion magazine. Situation becomes complex for Andy: she loves the job but dislikes the people surrounding it and the influence it has on their lives. Money replaces happiness, fame diminishes personal life, while power and clothes replace friendship and family. Time goes by and that influence soon enters Andy's own life. And in the end she must make the tough choice: deciding who she really wants to be. What and who she wants to matter in her life.
Don't bother trying to find which performance is the best. They are all amazing, with Anne Hathaway proving she's got the chops, Emily Blunt is superb and Meryl Streep as always is incomparable. One more perfect role to remember.
What really got me in this film is the lesson. The ending could be claimed as a wake up call. Undeniably, we all have been or will be in Andy's place. We all have to choose at some point in our lives what matters the most to us. No matter when is that opportunity going to come along, this movie reminded me to be awaken and not let that chance go by untapped. The amount of time and impact my job or other activities will have in my life is my own choice. Am I sure it's really what I want? Is there balance in my life or am I being controlled by my desires and goals to the point where I don't have a life?
It's a simple film about girl fashion if you want to not read too much into it. But it's a great film about priorities if you want to appreciate it. Somewhere around the end, we have the final lesson: the effect of previous choices and mistakes. Here you have Andy wisely concluding with something we all relate to at some point in our lives whether you're a boy or a girl:
"Learned a lot. In the end though, I kind of screwed it up."