Anne Hathaway Keeps Her Shirt On Through the Entire Movie!

Rating: Null/10 (27 March 2007)

Apparently Anne Hathaway has made her bones by making Disney a small fortune, done a couple of edgy flicks wherein she bares her ample bosom (and gets fired by Disney), and has finally arrived with The Devil Wears Prada, a chic-flick powered by two good performances, those of Meryl Streep and Stanley Tucci.
I don't understand the buzz about this movie--and you have to take that statement from a 48-year-old man living in a very red state with a grain of sea salt--but I know it's very popular. There's a whole lotta cliché-in' going on in TDWP, but Hathaway is an appealing and charismatic young woman who holds her own against Meryl Streep, doing the high-fashion diva act without breaking a sweat.
Streep is crisp and professional, so easily hate-able that you might miss two things she does that distinguish her performance. When Hathaway, new to the fashion industry, snickers at the imperceptible differences between a pair of blue belts, Streep verbally carves her up like a Christmas goose, and puts in a little bit about how Hathaway doesn't appreciate the thousands of jobs, the working-class paychecks the fashionistas create.
Later, when Streep is facing her umpteenth divorce, she appears rough, raw, without makeup, tearful and puffy. You expect her to reveal more, to let the audience see behind her armor, an actual human underneath the diva. But after a few unguarded moments with Hathaway looking helplessly on, she slips back into Imperious Bitch Mode.
She saves the scene from becoming maudlin by putting her armor back on. It's almost a dutiful suiting up, as if, if she didn't, she'd be betraying her obligation to kick the competition's collective ass.
It's as close to human as she gets until you see her in a tight close-up at the end of the film, when you understand that she knows who and what she is in the grand scheme.
Hathaway doesn't get to be that subtle. She is a beautiful woman, but her performance plays to Hathaway's strengths, nothing more or less. She gets to cry, laugh, get angry, and look good, but there's no stretch here. Putting pretty clothes on a pretty mannequin is not a big challenge.
Which brings us to Stanley Tucci, the wise homosexual who pounds Hathaway into professionalism with tough love. His character is as predictable as any other, but the last thing I saw Tucci in was the 1995 crime drama, Kiss of Death. He was reptilian and ambitious as a district attorney who betrays David Caruso. His balanced performance--neither too masculine or drag queen--is the best work in the movie and it took me twenty minutes to remember where I'd seen this guy before.
From my perspective, The Devil Wears Prada is a pleasant, if vacuous time-waster. There's nothing to be too cheerful about and nothing to get mad at. If the buzz sounds appealing, by all means rent it.