Working alongside Andy at Runway is an evil step-sister Miranda’s first assistant, a tart-tounged Englishwoman named Emily (Emily Blunt in a scenery-chewing, scene-stealing turn). Stanley Tucci plays a fairy godmother art director who takes Andy under his wing and helps her fit in.
The film’s fairy-tale setup is a large part of the film’s initial attraction, and Andy’s Cinderella-like metamorphosis from frumpily unfashionable bookworm to sleek, glamourous clotheshorse is, indeed, a sight to behold (the subtextual message, of course, is that the route to being fabulous lies in a makeover). Ill-fitting corduroy and discount-store sweaters are discarded in favor of designers who need only one name; functional flats are replaced by towering stilettos; an unruly, frizzy mane of hair is pared down into a glossy, sleek, swinging do.
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.
Article comments
1 - Chris Evans
I love it when the movies are better than the books.