Date:17/09/2006 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2006/09/17/stories/2006091700640200.htm

Karnataka - Bangalore

Flat, bland and unfashionable

The Devil Wears Prada (English)

Director: David Frankel

Cast: Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway, Stephen Tucci

IT WAS another book crying film me from every page. With David Frankel at the helm and costumes by Patricia Field, both who have worked earlier on Sex and the City, one was all ready to indulge in some fashion, witty one liners, beautiful people and a sense and feel of two vibrant cities - Paris and New York.

Unfortunately that is not the case with The Devil Wears Prada based on Laura Weisberger's novel of the same name.

The film is surprisingly flat, bland and very, very unfashionable. There is Anne Hathaway who leaves behind the brittle beauty of her suffering wife in Brokeback Mountain for yet another Cinderella story. She is Andy Sachs, who wants to become a journalist and ends up as assistant to the harridan Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep), editor-in-chief of the fashion bible, Runway.

So Andy turns up to work looking she is attending a "hideous skirt convention." But it is not long before with a little help from Nigel (Stanley Tucci) and the company warehouse, she turns up looking like a million dollars.

All comes right in the end and Miranda gets her just desserts while Andy becomes a serious journalist. Meryl Streep is a wondrous vision of whispery vitriol while the rest look pretty. The style is the biggest disappointment with problems of plenty.

The saving grace in all the fashion faux pas is the gold toe-ring. But it is too little, too late.

Mini Anthikad-Chhibber