An over-hyped chick-flick

Rating: 3/10 (18 December 2006)

"The Devil Wears Prada" is everything you'd expect and little else. One can't help but point out the striking similarities to earlier offerings featuring Anne Hathaway -- the same Cinderellian out-girl turned in-girl protagonist, the same friends vs. career dilemma, the same cookie-cutter scorned romantic interest (courtesy of Adrian Grenier), the same formulaic character development portrayal, etc. ...
The screen writing is disappointingly bland for long periods of time. Meryl Streep was convincing as the subtly ruthless Miranda Priestly, and Stanley Tucci delivers in a few scenes, but the rest of the cast is thoroughly unremarkable, as are their respective shallow characters. An especially big thumbs-down to Andy's supposedly forsaken friends, whom we clearly -should- sympathize with, but who come off as simplistic jerks unsupportive of Andy's understandable ambitions.
There are certain saving graces. Excepting the lame final 15 minutes, the plot paces itself well; that is, there is a relatively uniform distribution of unambitious, facile, Disney-esquire "entertainment." But I use the term loosely, and I leave it up to you to decide whether "entertainment" is a reasonable term to describe 109 minutes of intermittent smart-ass conversations between Andy and Miranda, Andy and Emily, Andy and Nigel, and Andy and her boyfriend or other friends, all of which offer little in the way of interesting relationship portrayals. The movie is billed as a comedy, but there are few really amusing moments.
Though there are more than a few predictably trite scenes (e.g. the obligatory "Don't you see? You've changed" lovers confrontation), I found nothing truly gag-worthy, and the distaste came in merciful portions.
I haven't read the book, nor do I know anything about fashion media, the fashion industry, or fashion in general. And unfortunately, "The Devil Wears Prada" doesn't delve deeply enough into its own premise, never really piquing my interest in the subject like I wanted it to, only managing to use fashion media as a buzzword-rife backdrop for, quoting an earlier reviewer, "The Princess Diaries 3." This was perhaps the greatest injustice of all.