Let your charm disarm your boss!. Review on Devil Wears Prada, The - Lauren Weisberger

This is a movie review not the book review. Surprisingly no one @ MS has requested a review for The Devil Wears Prada.

Ssssteam! That is the attitude Meryl Streep’s character of Miranda Priestly, editor of a very well to do fashion magazine, wears in this movie. She plays one of those nightmare sorts of boss one would never want to have.

Priestly is not exactly rhetorically acerbic. Though the underlying tone, and her immediate or unannounced presence in the work vicinity sure has a sharp affect. She is the fashion editor known for her hot and blazing temper. So much so that her presence forces the entire staff at her workplace to scoot helter skelter like rats running for safety when a building is on fire. Basically Priestly, as a fashion editor of Runaway, is just too insecure for different reasons – whether it is because she wants to preserve her position or because of shortcomings in personal relationships.

Strawberry candy. That’s Anne Hathway for you in this movie. Hathway plays the role of Andrea Sach. She actually is sweet but the role of Andy is just tooooo good. Its soooo sweet that you would want to chew her….err I mean the strawberry candy forever.

So, along comes Andy, an aspiring journalist, who joins Runaway as the assistant to Priestly. She is told by one and all that she had a job which “million girls would die for”. Andy is innocent and not aware of the ways of the glam journalism that she was getting into. She steps into her new role with a large hope which with time dwindles into a petite desire. In the end Andy trashes the idea of fashion journalism and enters the real world. She joins The New York Mirror.

This story is though not about Andy. It is more about Priestly. In a way the story is true that nuances of the same can be seen present in every office or workplaces around us. Its about a boss who comes from hell. It also shows how every corporation has tough deadlines, enormous work pressure, biting and bitchy colleagues, superficial environment, and hypocrisy.

Andy gets a share of all this crap and is treated in equal measure by her boss Priestly. She is bullied, made to attend irrelevant and obnoxious chores. Phrases like tough deadlines are belittled when Andy is thrown impossible tasks with impractical deadlines. Converting deadlines into results becomes a challenge for her. And she continues delivering just because her boss is tooo bossy and does not like to take no for an answer.

The good thing is that Andy survives. Though just when she thinks that she has made it, realization dawns upon her. This was not what she wanted to do. Despite being told that she was lucky to have a job that a million girls would kill to get Andy thinks otherwise. She walks away from the role of the fashion glam journo. She becomes one amongst a million girls to walk away from where she was just to do something real.

And that’s what happens. Just like the monk who sells his Ferrari, Andy walks away from Runaway.

I will not call Andy an escapist. She at times showed the tendency of being weak but that was because there was someone around her who was being unreasonable. In fact she disarms Priestly by entertaing every deadline that she puts on her. That’s not all. Andy realized though it may look good glam journalism I actually hollow.

This movie also brings to fore the important role that fashion editors play in phoren countries. In fact not just fashion, but automobile, food critics, technology writers, movie critics and others are very important people out there. This trend has not fully arrived in swades. Big time journos decide what is good or what is bad, what is in and what is out, and so on. They are taken very seriously outside. (I guess these judges are created just to run the huge business. In my opinion these professionals while writing something may be right or wrong but in the end it’s the consumer who should be smart. So as to decide whether the person who is writing is actually throwing jargon or making sense).

I may have digressed a little. Let me sum up the above para in one sentence. Fashion editors may be right but they are not God. We at times make them. Its important that we take ourselves seriously and decide what looks good or bad on us.

This movie may not be an excellent piece but its an entertainer. Certainly, worth a watch despite it being nothing new. One gets to know more about the emotions that run in any big corporate organization. But ya, if you really wish to chew on a strawberry for a long long time, then go ahead. Watch this for ‘Andy strawberry’ flavor, for it comes free with the movie. Trust me the taste lingers on for a while. That’s the special thing about this devil of a film.