The story follows Andrea "Andy" Sachs(Anne Hathaway), a frumpy journalism graduate who lands the high-pressure job of being the assistant to fashion maven Miranda Priestly, the overbearing boss of the famous Runway Magazine. It is said that if you work for Miranda for just a year then you can land almost any job in journalism. Unfortunately, Miranda deems most of her assistants "disappointments" and they either quit or are fired. But for an aspiring journalist like Andy, putting up with Miranda’s cold and dictatorship methods are worth the chance of landing a job at a more "serious" publication.
Runway has given many fashion designers, photographers and models their big break. Andy, however, is blissfully ignorant of couture, Runway’s importance in the publishing world and, worse, of Miranda’s stature. She will learn about all of them in difficult fashion(pun intended). It is not until Andy gets a support from Miranda’s fashion director Nigel(Stanley Tucci) that she realizes she wants to do her job well and win Miranda’s approval.
Transforming herself from plain Jane into a sexy, fashion-conscious young professional takes Andy’s colleague and Miranda’s longtime lead assistant Emily(Emily Blunt), as well as Andy’s blue collar boyfriend Nate(Entourage’s Adrian Grenier), by surprise. Even Miranda takes notice; she soon begins calling Andy by her correct name, and essentially grooms her to replace the increasingly frazzled Emily.
The better Andy gets at her job, the more of a workaholic fashionista she becomes. As Nate tells her when their relationship hits its lowest point, Andy sold her soul for designer shoes. By then, however, Andy has more than just material temptation to worry about. She is also being wooed by the handsome writer Christian Thompson(Simon Baker), who comes to Andy’s rescue during one of the film’s funniest segments(Miranda gives Andy a seemingly impossible task only to have it backfire).
Christian offers Andy romance and glamour, as well as entry into the kinds of serious journalism jobs that she desires. Will Andy forsake Nate for Christian? How ruthless and ambitious will she become? Can she regain her values and identity before it’s too late? These are the questions that drive Prada during its second half.
The performances are solid across the board, especially Streep’s delicious, scene-stealing turn as Miranda
Although Hathaway has already done the ugly duckling-turned-beautiful swan routine in The Princess Diaries, this character is more flawed and makes conscious moral choices that affect her life. Hathaway always makes Andy likable even as she becomes more like the kinds of people she once loathed. She holds her own with Streep, which is no small accomplishment seeing as how juicy Streep’s role is.
The fanciful Devil Wears Prada clips along at a brisk pace, often feeling like a big-screen version of Sex and the City. Director David Frankel, a veteran of various HBO series, adeptly handles the material, and should find his feature filmmaking prospects on the rise.