In another life, I used to have lunch at the Royalton, the height of chic in New York in the early nineties. One could gaze on Vogue editrix Anna Wintour. Don’t laugh-but she had a gazelle-like beauty, even if you knew she was a tyrant. As the Anna-inspired Miranda Priestly in “The Devil Wore Prada,” Meryl Streep is not gazelle-like. She’s got a butch haircut and her clothes are ugly. But Emily Blunt as Emily, a put-upon Miranda assistant, and Stanley Turci as Nigel, who loves and hates Miranda, are fabulous.
Nigel gets the best lines. Upon meeting Anna-Miranda’s new assistant who doesn’t yet look Vogueish: “Is there a before and after story I don’t know about?” And: “Six is the new 14.” There’s been some feminist hogwash (would anybody have complained about a man if it were “The Devil Wore Brooks Brothers”?). But the problem is that the movie just isn’t as much fun as it could be. We needed more Nigel and Emily and less didactic stuff. The movie needed to be shallower–with better clothes.