I just watched The Devil Wears Prada for the first time

I forced myself to sit through it. It really wouldn't have taken a lot to have been a much better film and still made the same points. The characters were SO single dimensional. Nasty Meryl. The lovely pretty Anne Hathaway...who almost becomes nasty due to her ambitions, but then sees the light. Her honest, sensitive, hipster boyfriend...there's always one of them, isn't there?... living with the lead in a funky downtown railroad apartment. Does this thing want to be a movie for grown ups or teenage girls? The tacky, tacked-on radio pop music drowned out half the dialogue. Meryl's performance is one note. I really think it has the bones of an enjoyable film, but it is so infantile. A much better script and a much better director and it could have said something.

• Diana Ross would have been a better Miranda Priestley

• Yes, Diana Ross would have been great, but that would have been a different film.

• R1, How about Vanessa Williams? She played someone simialr on Ugly Betty. I didn't like Devil for the reasons cited above, but also becuase I think Meryl Streep is incredibly overrated.

• I think Diana already played that role in "Mahogany".

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0umzclx_T4

• Why are guys touting Diana Ross? What has she ever done to prove she can play a convincing Anna Wintour?

• It was just as bad when it was called "The Best of Everything."

• Loved it and thought M was great. She looked like she had a lot of fun playing Miranda. So many great quotes too: "Florals? For spring? Ground breaking" "Tell Richard I saw the pictures that he sent for that feature on the female paratroopers and they're all so deeply unattractive. Is it impossible to find a lovely, slender, female paratrooper? Am I reaching for the stars here?" "By all means move at a glacial pace. You know how that thrills me." "I said to myself, go ahead. Take a chance. Hire the smart, fat girl. I had hope. My God. I live on it. Anyway, you ended up disappointing me more than, um- more than any of the other silly girls"

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• I liked it. I wasn't expecting "Gone with the Wind."

• The Devil Wears Prada is a great example of a movie being way better than the book. The Anne Hathaway character was a much bigger pill in the book; it was also poorly written.

• Thank you, OP. There's at least two of us now. Every gay guy I talked to wanted to put an ice pick in my back when I trashed this waste of celluloid. They recently re-ran an interview of Meryl on Fresh Air during pledge drive, and played a clip of her supposedly tour-de-force performance as Miranda. On radio it was even more obvious how bad her performance was. Did she not know it was a comedy?

• In the book Miranda was very one-dimensional. I don't know if it was the script or Meryl, but in the movie Miranda had many layers and was much more humanized.

• You seem like a drag to be around OP, it was a fun movie Streep gave a great performance (though honestly being nominated for an Oscar was a stretch).

• OP, you wanted a movie adaptation of that book with multi-dimensional characters? You're not asking for a lot, are you?

• Agreed R9. The character thought that because she aspired to be a 'serious' writer she was better than everyone else.

• [quote]I liked it. I wasn't expecting "Gone with the Wind." As if GWTW is some acting tour de force.

• I don't think anyone regards it as a good film on it's own. It's just one of those films you watch for Meryl Streep's performance. Are you going to pretend Meryl Streep is not a great actor? I would like to see some other actress elevate the mediocre material she has worked with.

• [quote] I would like to see some other actress elevate the mediocre material she has worked with. It surely didn't work for that piece of shit of a film "The Iron Lady." Her gift at being a mimic couldn't save the awful script and patchwork directing.

• r17 is right. Streep's performance was great, but the movie was awful and boring.

• It's good by romantic-comedy standards, but only due to the performances of Streep, Tucci, and Blunt. Hathaway is unremarkable.

• [quote]You seem like a drag to be around OP, it was a fun movie Streep gave a great performance Thanks for confirming that this was meant to appeal to teenage valleygays.

  OP

• Loved it when I first saw it, but I find it difficult to watch now, only because the scenes with Adrian Grenier and her friends outside the fashion industry are just too horrible to tolerate more than once.

• I would have loved to see Helen Mirren as Miranda. I felt Meryl wasn't mean enough.

• The first third or so if fun in an AbFab way, Meryl is very funny, but then it starts taking itself way too seriously and any entertainment value disappears.

• [quote]I would have loved to see Helen Mirren as Miranda. Even she wouldn't have made anything of the thin 'girlfriend' script.

• Meryl is playing Mike Nichols, whose work has been one note his entire career.

• What almost everyone here is saying: Meryl was great in this. She truly elevated the material, which of course was the point of hiring her. It's one of her strongest performances imo. She has a couple of scenes in this film where she is genuinely scary, the death stare at her house being one of them. She is also *brilliant* in that scene where she dresses down AH; basically all interactions with her employees are so well observed, realistic, scary, and funny at the same time. Meryl's Oscar nomination was richly deserved. I love that she chose to play a quiet, soft-spoken monster too. She based that performance on Mike Nichols, did you know? Emily Blunt was perfect as well.

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• I saw it on a plane. I must say, it's the kind of movie that should play on the back of a seat.

• r22, that was the point. She was NOT supposed to be a caricature. Helen Mirren would have overplayed her; cf. her over-the-top performance of a Russian woman in the Last Station. Meryl walked a fine line, a lot of observation went into this performance. Nobody could have done a better job.

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• I wish The Steep toll (tm) would drop dead.

• Lol, I just watched it this weekend too, with my good gay friend. He insisted that I watch it, "you're gay and you haven't seen it?" he asked. Well, there were some funny moments, good line deliveries, icy gestures, etc., but overall I thought it was pretty boring. But, at least know I've seen it.

• [r28]: I wasn't asking for a "caricature", I was saying she wasn't mean enough. Mirren would have rocked it.

• "now I've seen it"

  R30

• It could have been so much better if in the end it didn't sell out to the big fluffy ending and Ann's character became a young Miranda.

• She would not have rocked it, r31. She's prone to overacting in these "grande roles" (again, confer the Last Station, and the upcoming Hitchcok movie). She's great for quiet, intense roles, such as Prime Suspect or the Queen. In Devil Wears Prada she would have peeked through her performance non-stop. Something which Streep manages to avoid.

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• Also, r31, it WOULD have been a caricature if she had been any meaner. That was my point.

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• ITA with R35. M was mean enough. So much so that you wonder why Andy didn't just throw a latte in her face and walk out.

• It's absurd to find fault with Meryl in this, she was perfectly cast. The overly serious second half, cheesy ending and too much of bland Hathaway were the problems.

• I think Streep was entirely brilliant. That being said, I think Michelle Pfeiffer could have been a great Miranda as well. If you wanted to go English, I would put forward Kristen Scott Thomas as being a better Miranda Priestly option than Mirren, though she'd never have been a big enough name for the project.

• Agreed, r37. I'm glad most people understand what finely calibrated work Meryl delivered in this film. A very intelligent performance, based on weak original material. Not easy, and she pulled it off. As always!

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• Meryl should have won for the "belt scene" dressing-down speech. Emily Blunt shaking her head in disgust/exasperation at Anne during that speech was worth a nomination as well. Anne, her hipster douche bf and their free-loading friends were not remotely sympathetic in the film. I found myself agreeing with Meryl and Stanley Tucci's view of the "industry" early on.

• Mirren would have been better.

• I was refering to that scene earlier, r40. One of Meryl's finest moment in film, and yes, she should have won the Oscar that year, for that one alone. NOBODY could have delivered it like that, not Mirren, and most certainly not Michelle Pfeiffer or K. Scott Thomas. And that is: the truth.

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• Meryl and Emily Blunt were great...but Anne Hathaway and Adrian Grenier (as well as the annoying BFFs) made the film nearly unwatchable. Watch Miranda Priestly clips on YouTube and you've seen the only parts of the film worth viewing.

• A curious movie -- the scenes at the magazine seem, in the end, so much more real and honest than those when Andy is with her friends or family. Probably a lot of the reason is that the three main magazine characters (by Streep, Tucci, and Blunt) are just better done. In any case, what the movie does capture, better than any other film I know, is the sense of what "style" means. Gay culture worships style, but rarely gets a chance to think about what it is. Of course, this is by no means a towering intellectual idea, but one that I love seeing explored. And yes, the movie is far better than the book.

• Its the little moments - the cerulean speech, Blunt throwing Anne's briefcase with "this is FOUL", the death stare on the staircase, "oh my god you went upstairs, you WENT upstairs", hideous skirt convention, and meryl's berating of her idiotic staff (i'd be driven to do the same). The scenes outside the office are not worth watching even on a first viewing.

• Loved Meryl, Tucci, Blunt & Hathaway. Plus all the delicious lesbian fan fiction it inspired

  http://telanu.thirteenblackbirds.net/prada.html

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• It also seems to not understand how fashion works. Someone like Miranda wouldn't have to ask Calvin Klein for 15 skirts - they would just be sent along with Hermes scarves. They need the magazine, not the other way around. And getting a Harry Potter manuscript would involve one phone call to the editor or JK herself.

• "NOBODY could have delivered it like that, not Mirren, and most certainly not Michelle Pfeiffer or K. Scott Thomas." Mirren would have totally blown Streep out of the water with that scene. Easily.

• Streep is good, but the movie is a dud, save for a few exchanges here and there.

• I thought the Streep Troll promised to leave months ago.

• It's not a great movie, in fact, it's downright boring when Meryl isn't on the screen. Meryl is fantasic in this; she makes her character more human than in the book, but a trimph of narcissism nevertheless. Priestly is a goddess in her own world, surrounded by worshippers, and able to seduce an outsider like Annie into her self-centered religion. Meryl is able to play both the goddess and the human underneath, and to have the character's human frailties make her manipulation more dangerous. I'm not the Meryl troll, really.

• I guess I'm in the minority, but I thought Anne gave a solid performance.

• That movie is very lucky to have that cast. In terms of filmmaking, it is like a parody of bad '80s films with all its montages and pop score and dull camera set-ups. framed but little else. Almost weird how much of a throwback it was.

• [quote] it is like a parody of bad '80s films Yes, it reminded me of Slaves Of New York.

• Hey, everyone. It's a comedy. And it's very funny. Streep and Tucci deliver many hilarious lines perfectly. Forget the rest.

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• [quote]It's a comedy. And it's very funny Simple Simon got here just in time.

• I think Anne looked better as the thicker tomboy than the thinner model type.

• "Slaves of New York", yes -- and "About Last Night". I was waiting for Sheena Easton to start singing 'So Farrrrr, So Goooood" every time Anne made some progress at Vogue.

• PS. Think what Gus Van Sant would've done with this movie. Or Almodovar at his peak. John Waters. Where are all the directors with true style these days, the ones that elevate material instead of just setting up shots? Was Aranofsky (sp) the last one?

• I LOVE THIS MOVIE! That's all

• Faye Dunaway would have been better.

• [quote]Faye Dunaway would have been better. I soooo agree.

  OP

• It was entertaining.

• Faye would have been different. Meryl played it with more nuamce than Faye would have.

• Maybe too obvious, but I have a feeling that "Patsy Stone" could have worked in the role.

  http://www.google.com/search%3Fq%3Dpatsy+stone+quotes%26hl%3Den%26tbo%3Du%26tbm%3Disch%26source%3Duniv%26sa%3DX%26ei%3DGuSeUJXZOumr0AH1_YAg%26ved%3D0CEEQsAQ%26biw%3D994%26bih%3D608