THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA

The whole time I was watching this film, I just wanted to reach through my computer monitor, grab Andi by the shoulders, and shout, “This is “Vogue”, for cripes sake!”

The most apt thing one can say about the film is what another reviewer I read said: that this movie fails itself.

For most of its running time “The Devil Wears Prada” is a strong character drama about a girl becoming a young woman, not getting the job she thought she would in university but nonetheless growing personally, becoming proficient and developing an interest in something in which she had none previously.

Then, a little more than halfway through the proscribed year she is to spend working at the fictionalized version of “Vogue”, she chucks it all to work at some alt-weekly which probably would have closed down three years later.

Thus, one main takeaway from this film is what I wanted to scream at Andi, that “Runway/Vogue” didn’t get to be “Runway/Vogue” without the kind of leadership Miranda Priestly exercises, and no other category of magazine or any other kind of venture with the reputation of “Vogue” earns said reputation without someone similar to Miranda at the helm. That would include 20^th-Century Fox and even Anne Hathaway herself if you want to carry it that far.

My other take away is the dialectical message the film contains: namely, you can either be like Miranda Priestly, being both devious and successful, or you can be happy and work for a small operation which won’t lead to any opportunity.

Personally, I would have liked to see Andi stick it out for the year, then make her speech about how she couldn’t live in Miranda’s world. After this, we would see her applying at a magazine or TV station back home in Ohio, still with the bit about Miranda recommending her for the job, but with a more confident Andi showing us that, even though she didn’t decide to trod Miranda’s path, that year with the Dragon Lady was some of the most invaluable time of her life.

Update August 2025: Now having read the book, I think the movie was better.

First of all, Andi's being from Ohio and attending Northwestern for journalism works a lot better than, in the book, her being from Avon, Connecticut and having taken some self-directed English degree at Brown.

Second, in the movie, Andrea does not at all care about fashion, celebrities and such, whereas her character in the book does, she just hasn't read fake "Vogue."

The above two things help to strengthen the dynamic between Andi's world and Miranda's in the film, as does Andi's ambition in the movie to work at an alt weekly as opposed to book Andi wanting to work at "The New Yorker."

Fourth, for some reason her boyfriend in the movie being a chef works better than his being a teacher in the book.

Fifth, her smoking in the book doesn't work, either.

Sixthly, there is just plain no personal growth in the book. In fact, Andrea gets more disagreeable and less likeable as the book goes on.