Two Streep performances, one stylized and the center of the movie, the other so meek and lifeless you wouldn’t notice if she vanished. The Devil Wears Prada is actually reasonably entertaining, as long as you don’t expect anything bold or thoughtful. Only in a fashion magazine -- and in the movies – could Anne Hathaway be considered plain. The best the costume designer can do is dress her kind of frumpy, but it’s a half-hearted effort. Stanley Tucci is moderately entertaining as her confidante. Meryl Streep is fun as the Cruella de Vil-ish editor, a role to which she gives more depth than it deserves. There are better ways to spend two hours, but there are worse ways, too.
For instance: A Prairie Home Companion. I don’t know why I even bothered – I haven’t liked more than one or two Robert Altman films (The Player… uh… I think I liked MASH). They’re generally about 50% too long, 50% too talky, and wildly self-indulgent. Both Altman films and public radio put me to sleep, so it’s a wonder I stayed awake through this movie. (I had insomnia – I thought for sure it would be a cure.) But I did, and so I got treated to an absolutely inane and utterly uninvolving story about the last day of Garrison Keillor’s A Prairie Home Companion (the radio show) and how that affects the many, many, many people involved with it. The most moronic part of the movie is Virginia Madsen’s character, who floats around the action and seems to be visible to some people but not to others. Her role isn’t half as mysterious as Altman no doubt thought it was – but it’s twice as dumb. It only gets worse – the final scene is so ridiculously maudlin yet impassive in the typical Keillor style that it may be the only movie scene I’ve ever encountered that is simultaneously over the top and underplayed to the point of narcolepsy. Neat trick, that. Not that it makes the movie worth sitting through.
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