The Devil Wears Prada

There is enormous scope for a film that interrogates the fashion industry from the perspective of youth. Sadly, TDWP is not the new black. Certainly, the dialogue has a few feisty moments but nothing that will make the Ugly Betty writers lose any sleep. It’s impossible to sympathise with the protagonist, whose PA job is not nearly as awful as it is made out to be; so she has to get a steak which her boss then doesn’t eat? Boo hoo. Anne’s drippy chef boyfriend is so pathetic he isn’t trusted to speak more than four words consecutively; instead we are offered laboured visual clues ‘proving’ his worthiness, such as the fact that he makes her grilled cheese sandwiches after work. Blimey, if my boyfriend was a proper chef and then made me that fourth-rate crap, he’d be next on the Breville. As for the moment when Anne tosses her phone into the fountain… If one of my eight year old tutees came up with that scenario I’d scoff and tell her to ditch it immediately. Proof if it were needed that even a great premise and Meryl Streep can't make up for fundamentally lazy writing and unoriginal direction. Disappointing.