Tucci saves the day

Rating: 6/10 (20 July 2006)

Streep is brilliant and Hathaway is cute, cute, cute. Streep, a sadist of the "good kind," dispenses her venom through a thousand tiny cuts and exercises her control through a thousand demands for trivial satisfactions, and the movie looks like this stuff is supposed to be somewhat addictive to Hathaway, drawing her close to Miranda. But, no, for me Streep and Hathaway seemed to be acting each in her own bubble, sealed off from any simple human contact with the other. Hathaway and Tucci however, seemed to me to connect in every one of their scenes. And Tucci and Streep connected similarly--lightly, easily. His helpless hurt and rage was buried so deeply one could catch only occasional glimpses of it, but I saw in him what Andi would be in time. So, to me Tucci provided conductance among the characters that, without his skill, might never have been felt.