Mike Davies reviews the week's new cinema releases
THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA CERT PG 109 MINS
Rating: ***
While based on author Lauren Weisberger's caustic novel about her time as assistant to infamously demanding Vogue editor Anna Wintour, the blueprints for Sex & the City director David Frankel's office comedy are more readily to be found in such films as Working Girl and Nine to Five.
A pity then that its boss from hell satire on the self-important fashion industry, workplace intimidation and an image obsessed culture slowly dissolves into a soft centred cautionary tale about being true to yourself and doing the right thing where everyone turns out to be essentially decent types beneath the steel surface.
Newly graduated journalism major, Midwest ingenue Andy Sachs (Anne Hathaway) has moved to New York looking to break into the business.
As the film opens she's already got a decent apartment and a hunky live-in boyfriend, so clearly isn't doing too badly.
We know she's an independent down-to-earth spirit because, heading off for a job interview, she takes the subway while we see the other applicants hailing cabs.
The position is that of second assistant to Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep), the notoriously egotistical, hard-nosed perfectionist editor of fashion bible magazine Runway, a woman who has her entire staff scurrying round like frightened rabbits when they hear she's arriving at the office early.
Andy's never heard of her, so clearly doesn't read the magazine, and, as neurotic first assistant Emily (Emily Blunt) bitchily observes of her frumpy outfit, has no interest in fashion.
So failing to fit the profile, with the wrong clothes and the wrong body shape, the perverse Priestly naturally gives her gets the job.
Between Emily's catty comments and Miranda's tyrannical temperament and put downs, the daily grind's a self-confidence eroding and belittling ordeal of fetching coffee and hanging up coats, Andy only hanging in there because she has the support of boyfriend Nate (a bland Adrian Grenier) and sticking it out for a year is a passport to any magazine job she wants.
But then, after one particular humiliation, a tell it like it is chat with gay but never camp art editor Nigel (Stanley Tucci), affords an epiphany (and yet another of the film's multiple montages).
She'll play the game as far as appearances go, but hold firm to her inner self.
Naturally, that's not how it goes. The more she determines to impress with her efficiency and dedication to the job, the more she's seduced by the accoutrements and comes to secretly admire Miranda's single-mindedness so the more Nate, her friends (both of them) and personal life come a poor second to career.
Unfortunately, it's around this point that the screenplay pulls the fangs on its barbed one liners, satirical wickedness and office power games and soft-focuses attention instead on its formulaic cloyingly trite message, the laughs giving way to a rather dull third act about personal costs in which even Miranda is shown to have paid the price to get to where she is.
As the film's ostensible lead, Hathaway lacks the personality and screen presence to avoid being frequently upstaged by her wardrobe, but fortunately Tucci, Blunt and Streep are at the top of their game, the latter investing her couture Cruella De Ville with humanising notes and squeezing every nuanced variation possible out of a simple line like "that's all".
It's no comedy classic but, in a year that's been pretty much devoid of a decent chick flick, it's undeniably the best girls' night out at the movies in months, though it might be best to leave the plastic at home so you're not tempted by the urge to max out on designer labels once the end credits start to roll.
