Review of
The
Devil Wears Prada: Hell on Wheels, a movie starring Meryl
Streep and Anne Hathaway, DVD version
Five out of five stars
In a film world
dominated recently by long runs of what are often successive remakes as well as
massive action superhero movies, this one is original, entertaining and
refreshing. It demonstrates that there is still room in the genre for movies
about humans dealing with complex personal and professional situations.
Anne Hathaway
is Andy Sachs, an aspiring journalist fresh out of college that is hired as an
assistant to the extremely demanding fashion magazine editor Miranda Priestly (Meryl
Streep.) To say that Priestly is difficult is to say the sun is a bit hot, she
goes through assistants at a regular rate and her demands are on the edge of
impossible tasks.
Yet, the movie
is more about ambition, a drive to succeed, what it takes to make it in a very
demanding profession as well as the personal cost. When Sachs changes her
wardrobe and starts rising in the assistant hierarchy to Priestly, she begins
losing her friends. Her job becomes her life, she is on call nearly 24/7 and
she now dresses very elegantly and her friends point out the changes in her
personality. It is a very common problem that many successful people face, as
they rise to positions of influence and power, the people that were once their inseparable
companions are left behind.
The choice then
becomes to continue in the glamorous world of fashion with the incredible
stress of working for the most demanding of bosses or to go back to your roots.
It is a choice that many people have to make at some point in their life and it
is not an easy one.
The
performances of Streep and Hathaway are excellent, Priestly is very
unemotional, yet demonstrates her anger in obvious ways. Streep demonstrates
once again that great emotion can be expressed by simply altering your tone of
voice as well as your cadence. It is an enjoyable film about difficult circumstances
that many people face.
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