1930s comedy for the 21th century

Rating: 7/10 (29 October 2006)

It's so clever. The first hour is completely according to the manual, which was settled in Hollywood before WW2. You know from minute to minute what's gonna happen, but it's there at the right second. Professionalism! Meryl Streep is great, but lives only on her technique. There is no intention to make this she-devil a complex person. She never raises her voice, just works with faces, glimpses and ways to say her lines. It's like an instruction movie about making a mean comedy character.
But once again, everything is so very clever, until the plot gets too eager in moralizing and doesn't want the audience to make its own judgments (which has been really easy that far). The 30s made these kind of movies better, but this is a good try.