rantlust

Posted by anupcs on July 01st 2006 in Celebrity, Fashion, Movies, Rants, Raves
::  [Print This Post]

What is it with our superheroes? Especially the big three. Why do they all have to wear tights? None of them would stand a chance working for a fashion magazine such as the fictitious Runway of “The Devil Wears Prada.” Superman probably won’t even get past the security in the lobby. I mean, this is a superhero who we revere as a god and he wears his underwear outside his clothes. We should be grateful his creators didn’t make him wear a red thong instead.

Even if Superman wore Prada or one of the more in-vogue labels like Marc Jacobs or Marni, it could not have saved the calamitous “Superman Returns” for me. For the first time since 1999’s “Titus,” I walked out of a movie. Forty-five minutes of shoddy screenplay and unbelievably bad acting later, a gentle touch was all that I needed to get my wife to accompany me out of the theater. The timing was perfect for us to sneak into a showing of Meryl Streep’s latest. And boy did that movie save the day or what.

Maybe I have outgrown Superman (I haven’t yet outgrown Spiderman or Batman). I found the movie unbearable from the very beginning. Brandon Routh is the newcomer who plays our hero. Even a cattle prod stuck up his behind can’t make this man act. The others in the movie, for what I saw of it, don’t fare well either. Kate Bosworth as Lois Lane appears constipated; Sam Huntington as Clark Kent sidekick Jimmy Olsen is annoying; Eva Marie Saint as Martha Kent is wax-like. Even Kevin Spacey, who I like, disappoints. He gets in a few funny lines but then it gets tiresome fast. Only indie queen Parker Posey, who as Luthor’s moll Kitty gets to utter a few funny albeit imbecilic lines, provides relief. I didn’t wait around to see James Marsden’s character and so can’t comment on him.

Now we all know that Superman can do pretty much anything that a god should be able to do including stopping planes from crashing after hurtling through space at Mach 5. What we don’t get is how the people inside the aforementioned plane, despite being thrown about like dice inside a Yahtzee shaker while on the way down, don’t even have small scratches to show for it. Show us some blood and maybe we will torture ourselves for ten more minutes. They spent $200+ million on this crap?

“The Devil Wears Prada,” despite all the makings of a chick flick, was a huge relief. I did wonder afterwards whether this was because of what came before for us but no, I do think it’s a terrific movie. For starters the acting is superb. Meryl Streep is our greatest living actress and it doesn’t get any better than her performance as the titular devil. She is Miranda “Dragon Lady” Priestly, the sadistic and impossibly demanding boss of Runway, the preeminent fashion magazine of the country. Beautiful Anne Hathaway holds her own as the spunky Andrea Sachs, who really wants to work for The New Yorker but gets the job that “a million girls would kill for” despite her visible lack of fashion sense. The two are brilliant but so are some of the supporting cast: Stanley Tucci as Priestly’s right-hand man Nigel, and Emily Blunt as the sarcastically blunt first assistant.

The movie starts off with Andrea (Andy) trying to get a job. She is sent to Runway by “human resources.” She has no idea of fashion, has never heard of the magazine or Miranda Priestly before this and yet tries to convince Priestly that she is a hard worker. When Miranda cruelly says that she has no sense of style or fashion, Andy begins to respond by saying that it depends. Before she could finish, Miranda cuts her off and says: “No, no. That wasn’t a question.” Ouch! Andy nevertheless gets hired as the second assistant.

Streep gets to strut around in high end designer clothes and bark orders left, right, and center to her minions, especially Andy. She expects her to do the impossible like getting a pre-published manuscript of the latest Harry Potter books (for her twins) or to get her out of a hurricane ridden Miami. She dismisses people from her audience with the softly uttered brush-off: “That’s all.” You can feel the chill. This will probably be the catchy cinematic phrase of the year.

The necessary sentimental scenes between Andy and her stubble laden boyfriend are kept to the minimum and don’t wear us down. The movie comes to its predictable conclusion after an hour and forty minutes that I hardly felt go by. It’s based on the roman à clef by Lauren Weisberger who once did a stint as assistant to Vogue’s Editor-in-Chief, Anna “Nuclear” Wintour.