hilarious yet probing

Rating: 8/10 (25 September 2013)

This 2006 Pictures 2000 Production, based on the novel by Lauren Weisberger, is a comedy, yes, but simultaneously it deals with the character of the individual persons and how they affect others around them. Succinctly, it is a story about a very recent graduate from Northwestern University who rejects Stanford Law School to go into journalism, but ends up going to New York to work for the company known as Runway Fashion, and for her it is a foray: she doesn't know the first thing about fashion; the girl, Andrea Sachs (Ande) is played well by the attractive Anne Hathaway. Meryl Streep plays the very demanding supervisor-so cold, overbearing, unbearable, unsmiling, and so seemingly-heartless that she is referred to as a witch. Emily Blunt plays the secretary Emily, a young British lady who herself is unsmiling, hateful, and bitter; she is so much like Amanda in personality, yet, despite this, or maybe because of it, she and the "witch" Amanda don't get along well with each other. Both are initially very ugly toward Ande, but that does change later. Stanley Tucci plays Nigel, a somewhat sissified man who, however, in his own strange way does help Ande. Despite Ande's awkward start, she soon does begin to do her job efficiently and thus proves herself, and thus also betters herself, but her friends begin to think that she is changing toward them, and not for the better. At the same time it is unfair of them, and especially her boyfriend, to be ugly toward her, though the vice-versa of that isn't true. (Does anyone follow the Golden Rule anymore?) The setting is not only New York but also Paris, which is very glittery at night. Again, it is a comedy but also a very introspective movie, and worth the time to see it.