It should be pointed out that ugly duckling roles seem to have become a speciality for Hathaway; this is the third movie she’s appeared in where she undergoes a transformation from frumpy to fab.

The real star, though, is Meryl Streep’s Miranda Priestly. Despite the fact that Priestly is, structurally, the story’s antagonist, she dominates every scene she’s in — and the film as a whole. Part of this, of course, is simple magnetism; Streep is a Movie Star, and the camera loves her as such. Curiously, while most classic movie stars play variations on a theme - James Garner, for example, has become the living embodiment of the affable (if now aging) rogue - Streep is a movie star despite herself; she embraces roles that are alike only in that they’re all middle-aged white women (see her sentimental Yolanda Johnson in A Prairie Home Companion as a contrast to Priestly).

From the calculatedly unthinking manner that she dumps her coat and purse on Andy’s desk, to her brilliant first-act speech where she draws the line from a turquoise belt to Andy’s blue sweater, to the chilly way she savors the fashion world’s fawning obsequiousness, Streep’s Priestly is an astonishing creature. Her ability to strike fear into her underlings with just a whisper (a trick Streep borrowed from Clint Eastwood, her co-star and director in The Bridges of Madison County, another decent movie fashioned from an absolutely awful novel) invokes power both power and respect.

The film dutifully trundles through its various plot mechanics (the hunky writer rake; the up-and-coming designer; the rival editor), but set against the simple pleasure of watching Streep, they fade to become simple window dressing; the actual details of the plot seems secondary and serve only to bump the film through its acts.

The Devil in both the book and the movie refers to Miranda Priestly, of course. But the novel’s devil is a one-dimensional harridan, high on power and thoroughly unlikable. The movie’s devil is a seductive demon, using glamour and power and shiny pretty things to lure Andy into changing who she is; Priestly is akin to Milton’s Lucifer, a devil who seduces rather than overpowers.

The title sequence of the film is a rapid-fire montage of assorted female Runway staffers going through their daily prep; their artifice is contrasted against a pre-makeover Andy stumbling through her morning (the end of the sequence has the staffers all hopping into cabs, while Andy descends into the subway on her way to her job interview at the magazine). The message seems unmistakable; yet, post-makeover, Andy turns into one of them, even going so far as to lose enough weight to go from a perfectly respectable size 6 to a size 4.

The devil knows that glamour seduces even those who reject it; at the end of the film, Andy turns her back on Runway and gives away all her couture clothing. But she keeps her fabulous haircut.