Thursday, October 05, 2006
The Devil Wears Prada
Here at Mentok the Mindtaker, we're all about saving you money. For example, I once managed to jerry-rig a big screen projection system using electronic spare parts that cost a fraction of the store-bought versions. Of course, my projector contraption looks like it was built in the former Soviet Union and it emits an odd odour if you leave it running for more than an hour, but it works.
In that jerry-rigging, do-it-yourself spirit, I offer you this simple plan for viewing the Devil Wears Prada without the expense and hassle of going to a theatre or renting it on video.
1. Using a four-way splitter, attach 3 DVD players to your TV and begin playing the movies Working Girl, Swimming With the Sharks and the Princess Diaries simultaneously.
2. On the fourth input feed, tune your TV to the Fashion Network.
3. Consume enough alcohol so that things begin to blur together, but not enough that the room starts to spin. If you choose Mentok's signature drink, the Hurricane Katrina, two of those babies should do the trick.
4. Use your universal remote to quickly switch among the four input feeds. Keep this up for about two hours.
Voila! You have just watched the Devil Wears Prada.
Seriously, although the movie draws on some well-worn themes, it is on the whole a good movie well worth renting on video.
The story, in brief: struggling young fish-out-of-water (Anne Hathaway) who knows nothing about fashion lands a job as an assistant to monster-boss Meryl Streep, the editor of a prestigious fashion magazine. Yada, yada, yada, Hathaway discovers wealth and glamour are shallow and instead finds the secrets of true love and real happiness.
The movie on the whole does a very good job of depicting the "royal court" environment of an industry that is fixated on itself and therefore totally alienated from real life. This is symbolically depicted in a scene in which Hathaway's is supposed to drop something off at the editor's house with strict instructions not to go beyond the foyer. When Hathaway is lured into the private areas of the house, she sees that her all-powerful boss is, in her "real" life, completely powerless to stop her husband from falling out of love with her.
In this and other scenes, Streep does a particularly subtle job of adding dimension to a boss-from-hell character that could have been played even more cartoonishly than it was written.
I question the casting choice of Anne Hathaway. More to the point, I question Hathaway's career choice in making this movie. There really is far too much Princess Diaries in this story. I have faith that Hathaway has talent but she's in danger of getting typecast, if she isn't already. (By the way, guys, this is definitely a chick-flick, so regrettably there is no Anne Hathaway nudity in this movie.)
I fully expect this movie to pop up at the Golden Globes and possibly the Oscars. It doesn't deserve it, but it will get there anyway on the basis of its Working Girl vibe, I predict.
On the whole, I liked the movie, wasn't knocked out by it, but it's a perfectly suitable choice for a video night.
posted by Mentok @ 2:51 PM,
1 Comments:
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At 9:12 AM,
Bathroom Hippo said...
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-shudders-
