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THE
DEVIL WEARS PRADA 2006
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In
our view, The Devil Wears Prada was one of the best films of
2006, with a highly anticipated sequel due for release in
2026.
PLOT
Aspiring journalist Andrea "Andy" Sachs has recently graduated from Northwestern University. Despite her lack of knowledge of the fashion industry, she is hired as a junior personal assistant to Miranda Priestly, the notoriously cruel editor-in-chief of Runway magazine in New York City. Andy resolves to tolerate Miranda's abusive treatment until she can use her connections from Runway to find a job more focused on journalism.
Andy fits in poorly with her superficial, fashion-forward co-workers, particularly Miranda's senior assistant, Emily Charlton, and struggles to meet Miranda's irrational demands. After Andy fails to arrange for Miranda to be flown back from Miami during a hurricane, Miranda berates her. Andy approaches Runway's art director, Nigel, for advice, and he helps her select stylish clothes to wear to work.
After noticing Andy's change in appearance and increased commitment to the job, Miranda begins to delegate more complicated and important tasks to her. As Andy becomes more glamorous and absorbs the Runway philosophy, she gradually outperforms Emily, who yearns to attend Paris Fashion Week as Miranda's assistant and, in preparation for the event, adheres to extreme diets that endanger her health.
When Emily arrives to work while sick and forgets important details about the guests at a charity benefit, Andy steps in to save Miranda from embarrassment. Miranda then selects Andy to be her assistant at Paris Fashion Week instead of Emily. Emily is later hit by a car; while visiting her in the hospital, Andy informs Emily of Miranda's changed plan, and Emily berates Andy for accepting Miranda's offer. Andy's boyfriend Nate breaks up with her, disappointed that she has become one of the shallow, egotistical women she once ridiculed.
In Paris, Andy learns that Miranda's husband has filed for divorce. Later that night, Nigel tells Andy that he has accepted a job as creative director with rising designer James Holt. She spends the night with an attractive writer, Christian Thompson, who tells her that Jacqueline Follet (Miranda's counterpart as editor-in-chief at French Runway) is being prepped to replace Miranda. Andy attempts to warn Miranda, but Miranda dismisses her.
At a later luncheon, Miranda announces Jacqueline as Holt's new creative director, much to Andy and Nigel's shock. Later, Miranda reveals that she already knew of the scheme to replace her, and sacrificed Nigel's ambitions to keep her job. Andy is repulsed by Miranda's betrayal of her friend, but Miranda points out that Andy did the same thing to Emily by agreeing to accompany Miranda to
Paris. Not wanting to become the type of person Miranda is, Andy storms off. When Miranda tries calling her, Andy tosses her phone into the Fontaine de la Concorde.
Some time later back in New York, Andy meets up with Nate, who tells her he has a new job as a sous-chef in Boston, and they agree to keep in touch. The same day, Andy has an interview at the
New York Mirror newspaper. The editor recounts that when he called Runway for a reference, Miranda told him that Andy was the biggest disappointment she had ever had as an assistant, and that he would be an idiot not to hire her.
After getting the job, Andy calls Emily and offers her the clothes she obtained in Paris. While walking past the Runway office building, Andy sees Miranda and waves at her. Miranda does not acknowledge Andy, but smiles to herself once she is seated in her car.
ABOUT
The Devil Wears Prada is a 2006 American comedy-drama film directed by David Frankel and produced by Wendy Finerman. The screenplay, written by Aline Brosh McKenna, is based on the 2003 novel by Lauren Weisberger. The film stars Meryl Streep, Anne
Hathaway, Stanley Tucci, and Emily Blunt. It follows Andy Sachs (Hathaway), an aspiring journalist who gets a job at a fashion magazine but finds herself at the mercy of her demanding editor, Miranda Priestly
(Streep).
20th Century Fox bought the rights to a film adaptation of Weisberger's novel in 2003, before it was completed; the project was not greenlit until Streep was cast. Principal photography lasted 57 days, primarily taking place in New York City from October to December 2005. Additional filming took place in Paris.
The Devil Wears Prada premiered at the LA Film Festival on June 22, 2006, and was theatrically released in the United States on June 30. It received positive reviews, particularly for Streep's performance; she won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy and was nominated as Best Lead Actress for the Academy Award, BAFTA Award, SAG, and Critics' Choice. The film grossed over $326 million worldwide, for a
reported production cost of $35-41 million.
Most designers and other fashion notables avoided appearing as themselves for fear of displeasing the American Vogue editor Anna Wintour, who is widely believed to have been the inspiration for Priestly. Wintour eventually overcame her skepticism, saying she liked the film and Streep's performance in particular.
CRITICS
The Devil Wears Prada received generally positive reviews from critics. On Rotten Tomatoes the film holds an approval rating of 75% based on 195 reviews, along with an average rating of 6.7/10. The website's critics consensus reads, "A rare film that surpasses the quality of its source novel, this Devil is a witty expose of New York's fashion scene, with Meryl Streep in top form and Anne Hathaway more than holding her own." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 62 out of 100, based on 40 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade "B" on an A+ to F scale.
Initial reviews of the film focused primarily on Streep's performance, praising her for making an extremely unsympathetic character far more complex than she had been in the novel. "With her silver hair and pale skin, her whispery diction as perfect as her posture, Ms. Streep's Miranda inspires both terror and a measure of awe," wrote A. O. Scott in The New York Times. "No longer simply the incarnation of evil, she is now a vision of aristocratic, purposeful and surprisingly human grace."
David Edelstein, in New York magazine, criticized the film as "thin", but praised Streep for her "fabulous minimalist performance". J. Hoberman, Edelstein's onetime colleague at The Village Voice, called the movie an improvement on the book and said Streep was "the scariest, most nuanced, funniest movie villainess since Tilda Swinton's nazified White Witch in The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
Blunt, too, earned some favorable notice. "[She] has many of the movie's best lines and steals nearly every scene she's in," wrote Clifford Pugh in the Houston Chronicle. Other reviewers and fans concurred. While all critics were in agreement about Streep and Blunt, they pointed to other weaknesses, particularly in the story. Reviewers familiar with Weisberger's novel assented to her judgment that McKenna's script greatly improved upon it. An exception was Angela Baldassare at The Microsoft Network Canada, who felt the film needed more of the nastiness others had told her was abundant in the novel.
Some reviews characterized the film as shallow or lacking thematic depth, emphasizing its surface glamour over its commentary on work, ambition, and power. David Denby summed up this response in his New Yorker review: "The Devil Wears Prada tells a familiar story, and it never goes much below the surface of what it has to tell. Still, what a surface!" Reactions to Hathaway's performance were not as unanimous as for many of her costars. Denby said "she suggests, with no more than a panicky sidelong glance, what Weisberger takes pages to describe." Whereas, Baldassare said she "barely carrie the load".
DEPICTION OF THE FASHION INDUSTRY
Some media outlets allowed their present or former fashion reporters to weigh in on how realistic the movie was. Their responses varied widely. Booth Moore at Los Angeles Times chided Field for creating a "fine fashion fantasy with little to do with reality," a world that reflects what outsiders think fashion is like rather than what the industry actually is. Unlike the movie, in her experience fashionistas were less likely to wear makeup and more likely to value edgier dressing styles (that would not include toe rings). "If they want a documentary, they can watch the History Channel", retorted Field. Fashion writer Hadley Freeman of The Guardian, likewise complained the film was awash in the sexism and clichés that, to her, beset movies about fashion in general.
But Charla Krupp, the executive editor of SHOP, Inc., wrote, "It's the first film I've seen that got it right ... [It] has the nuances of the politics and the tension better than any film—and the backstabbing and sucking-up." Joanna Coles, the editor of the U.S. edition of Marie Claire, agreed:
The film brilliantly skewers a particular kind of young woman who lives, breathes, thinks fashion above all else ... those young women who are prepared to die rather than go without the latest Muse bag from Yves Saint Laurent that costs three times their monthly salary. It's also accurate in its understanding of the relationship between the editor-in-chief and the assistant.
Ginia Bellefante, former fashion reporter for The New York Times, called it "easily the truest portrayal of fashion culture since Unzipped (1995)" and giving it credit for depicting the way fashion had changed in the early 21st century. Her colleague Ruth La Ferla found a different opinion from industry insiders after a special preview screening. Most found the fashion in the movie too safe and the beauty too overstated, more in tune with the 1980s than the 2000s. "My job is to present an entertainment, a world people can visit and take a little trip," responded Field.
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