The Devil Wears Prada.

I'll try to avoid the trap of describing this movie by comparing it to other movies. That's lazy, anyway, isn't it? It's like describing Canada in ways it's not America. Besides, I'm afraid that a lot of movies that might come to mind would be shallow, ephemeral, and forgettable compared to The Devil Wears Prada (2006). Devil is a more substantial offering, although at first glance it might appear to be a toothless chick flick.

Anne Hathaway plays Andrea, a journalism graduate desperate for work in New York City when she lands a job as an assistant to the editor of the fashion magazine, "Runway." She is not familiar with the magazine or the editor. Compared to other girls that work at the magazine, she wears frumpy (preppie?) clothes and is fat (size 6 - "the new size 14"). Also compared to the other girls, she has no preknowledge of the editor. This ignorance might be what saved Andrea, because she didn't have a pre-existing fear of the editor, Miranda Presley, played by Meryl Streep. She is cold, demanding, spoiled, entitled, and very, very, powerful. Andrea quickly learns to fear Miranda, as does anyone else who recognises her name.

Andrea finds that she gets more respect around the office if she plays the part, so she smoothes out her hair and wears more makeup and couture. No, you do not whiff Pretty Woman (1990). This is not a caterpillar-to-butterfly narrative. Although there is one short sequence revealing all her new beautiful clothes, Andrea's change of clothes does not represent a change of Andrea. In the beginning, anyway. She uses the clothes simply to get what she wants, but as time goes by, she begins to fear Miranda more and more, and she falls into the cycle at which she once scoffed. Really, it's a butterfly-to-caterpillar narrative.

Andrea becomes rather ugly in her scrambing to please Miranda. She starts blowing off her adorable boyfriend, family, and friends, and her sorrys are soon devalued. She hysterically scours the city when Miranda demands copies of the seventh Harry Potter manuscript for her children-of-the-corn twin daughters, and drops a dress size, although I'm not sure if it was by design or shredded nerves. Miranda finally gives Andrea the stamp of approval when she asks her to accompany her to Paris for Fashion Week. By accepting, though, she has to stab one of her co-workers in the back. Her remorse is momentary.

Andrea takes a long, hard look at herself in Paris after an episode where Miranda's terrible facade momentarily breaks. She is weepy at the news that her husband is divorcing her, but as she remorses that her daughters will not have their father around, in the same breath, she demands Andrea reconfigure the seating plans for a formal dinner. Andrea sees that while Miranda does have some humanity, it's not much.

I didn't read The Devil Wears Prada, because I think I dismissed it as chick lit, and I don't like chick lit. I haven't read a lot of this saccharine pulp which floods bookstores' shelves with their brightly-coloured graphic covers, but I've gotten the impression that shopping and finding a dream man are the common demoninators. Although those are two things that I think about, it's not my entire life, and I don't find it entertaining or compelling fiction. In the movie offering of this Laura Weisberger novel, it is obvious that we're dealing with a different equasion. Andrea has her dream man as the movie starts, we never see her shopping, and she never covets the clothes she wears. They are a means to an end, but she loses track of that that end goal is.

Ok - maybe I will compare it to another movie - Mean Girls (2004). I bring up Mean Girls only because it's another example of a movie I didn't expect much out of, but over-delivered. This was good, better than I expected, and not all about pretty clothes, although there are a lot of those, too.