The real Cinderella

Rating: 7/10 (21 December 2006)

What we have here is essentially a remake of the Cinderella story, this time transplanted (aptly enough) to the world of high fashion. If the result isn't exactly fresh it is still smart and fast. It features, in Meryl Streep, the most delectably wicked of stepmothers; and of the fairy godmother, more later. They all get to go to the ball, which means flying to the big show in Paris, but in this telling it's not the prince but Cinderella who has to choose. As the downtrodden young heroine Anne Hathaway does creditably enough, treading the line between wide-eyed and streetwise. It's the princes, the true one and the false one, who don't measure up, and the lack of a believable relationship with either of them deprives the movie of even the modest moral tension that a fairy tale should have. The regular boyfriend is so bland and nice he might as well be played by a muppet, and he practically is. As the plausible but, wouldn't you know it, deep down sleazy alternative, Simon Baker assays Hugh Grant territory. But if Hugh Grant's (or, before him, Alan Alda's) career trajectory tells you anything, it's that the public has to hate you for being nice before it will like you for being a cad, and Baker hasn't put in the mileage yet. In the end, Cinderella does the right thing: after witnessing a coldly calculated act of betrayal, she leaves the world of high glamour and goes to work for a metropolitan newspaper, where, as everyone knows, such things never happen. One critic remarked that just once he'd like to see a picture where the heroine gains fame and success *and* finds a way to stay true to her conscience. It only later dawned on me that The Devil Wears Prada does indeed have a character who does just that. In the role of Nigel, the sage and devoted offsider, Stanley Tucci warms the film without oversweetening it. Watch the scene where he thinks that, at long last, his long years of loyal service are about to pay off. His is a Cinderella story within a Cinderella story, and it's where the real heart and soul of the film is to be found.