The Devil Wears Prada

What are you prepared to do to get to the top? Wannabe journalist Andy Sachs (Hathaway) has been on the skids for a while and is reduced to applying for a job as a lowly assistant to Miranda Priestly (Streep) - editor of the fashion magazine 'Runway'. Andy has no interest in the fashion scene and has never read Runway or even heard of Miranda, but her down-to-earth attitude endears her to the fashion mogul. The high maintenance Miranda makes Andy's life hell but she gets to grips with the job and becomes a dedicated follower of fashion herself. Soon, her hoity-toity attitude distances her friends and threatens to destroy her long-standing relationship with boyfriend Nate (Grenier).Swimming With Sharks meets Wall Street meets Working Girl - this is the movie that Sex And The City fans have been waiting for: expensive clothes, even more expensive shoes, manhattans in Manhattan clubs, a new level of bitchiness found and conquered, while always keeping its tongue firmly in its cheek. At times, though, it seems unsure what it wants to say - just as it looks like it is about to get fashion in a headlock, drag it outside and give it a good kicking, it pulls back, apologises and buys it a new pair of Jimmy Choos instead. Hathaway is great, believable as the dowdy (their words, not mine - I though she looked fine) country girl in the beginning, and then as a textbook Machiavellian ladder-climbing cow. Her transformation is subtle and if they didn't keep piling on more and more tasty clothes to show that she is changing inside and left it up to her acting talents instead, it would be a better performance. But this is Streep's movie. Coming across like a Cruella Deville with PMS, Streep chews the scenery, the drapes, her stilettos and everything else in the room every time she's on screen, raising the level of Queen Bitch for everyone. This movie knows its target audience and gives them everything they want, and despite what you think of the fashion world, for that it is to be commended.