 They're positioning The Devil Wears Prada, starring Meryl Streep, as the adult (mostly female adult) alternative to Superman Returns. Most critics agree that Streep's performance significantly overpowers Brandon Routh's as the Man of Steel. Gene Seymour in Newsday describes Miranda, a fashion magazine queen, as a "silken terror, releasing her condescension and invective with the measured malice of a professional killer," as Streep portrays her. Carrie Rickey in the Philadelphia Inquirer concludes, "Streep dominates the movie in the great comic performance of her career." Jennifer Frey in the Washington Post observes that despite the thin plot of the movie, "Streep makes it work. Streep makes it fun." Jack Mathews in the New York Daily News describes one scene in which Streep's character Miranda is caught without makeup. "It's a prototypical Oscar moment in which Streep plays the kind of stunned composure that suggests a stricken Queen Elizabeth, only with cooler clothes, more power and better-looking children." As for the movie itself, Rick Groen comments in the Toronto Globe & Mail: "This is a breezy and enjoyable piece of pop entertainment -- a welcome reminder of what Hollywood used to be good at." Across town at the Toronto Star, Peter Howell concludes: "The Devil Wears Prada is an awards season attraction that somehow escaped into the temperate months of the super and the silly, all the more reason to applaud its audacity." But Joe Morgenstern in the Wall Street Journal regards the film as lacking, surprise, "emotional extravagance" and "simple zestful fun." And Claudia Puig in USA Today concludes her review by writing: "This skewering of the world of couture is simply not juicy enough." |
