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'The Devil Wears Prada': Devilishly fun

The dishy new comedy "The Devil Wears Prada" is dressed to kill.

Killer cast, killer clothes, killer laughs. And best of all, you don't have to know the difference between Donna Karan and Donna Summer to delight in the film's wicked workplace politics.

20th Century Fox 'The Devil Wears Prada' A- The verdict: A devilishly good time and the most scrumptious comedy of the year. Director: David Frankel Starring: Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway, Emily Blunt, Tracie Thoms, Adrian Grenier Run time: 106 minutes Release date: June 30, 2006 Rating: PG-13 for some sensuality. See showtimes On the web Official movie site View the trailer    Trailers require Quicktime [an error occurred while processing this directive]

Based on Lauren Weisberger's best-selling roman à clef about her adventures in the perfect-skin trade as a lowly assistant to Vogue magazine's Anna Wintour, David Frankel's ("Entourage," "Sex and the City" ) movie is as crisp as a starched white shirt, as clever as the perfect pair of Jimmy Choos, and as self-confident as a supermodel.

Our newly graduated heroine, Andy Sachs (fetching Anne Hathaway), wants a job in Manhattan's literary world, preferably at the New Yorker. She settles for indentured servitude as the junior assistant to icy Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep), the legendary and formidable editor in chief at glamorous Runway magazine. She's told almost hourly, "A million girls would kill for this job," but after a few days at Miranda's malicious beck and call, Andy is ready to kill herself.

Or Miranda.

However, if she can hang on for a year, her experience as Miranda's punching bag will guarantee her a job at just about any publication she chooses. Including the New Yorker.

So she makes her deal with the devil, enduring snide suggestions that a size 6 (5-foot-10 Andy's size) is the new 14. Or suffering Miranda's out-loud mea culpa about her new hire, "I told myself, go ahead. Take a chance on the smart fat girl."

The film's devilishness, you might say, is in the details. Miranda's curt "That's all," to signal she's no longer interested in having you anywhere within five feet of her. The office-wide pandemonium when it's reported Miranda is on the premises, as flats are tossed for stiletto heels and panicked cries, "She's coming!" sound like grunts yelling, "Incoming!" in a war zone.

After observing her college-girl togs and asking if there was "a before-and-after piece I don't know about," Nigel (Stanley Tucci), Runway's fashion maven, takes Andy under his expensively clothed wing and gives her a makeover.

Two things work especially well in the movie. First, screenwriter Aline Brosh McKenna has softened Weisberger's sometimes bilious novel, made it a little less Old Testament in its wrath. And she's cut down on the scenes with Andy's family, boyfriend, etc. — essentially anything that takes us away from the addictively toxic corridors of Runway.

Secondly, the casting couldn't be better. It would've been easy — expected — to hire some TV-sized actor who specializes in swish as Nigel, but instead Frankel chose Tucci, who gets inside this man and makes him more than a grab bag of drag-queen tragedy, arch witticisms and "Queer Eye" bitchiness. As Miranda's senior assistant, Emily Blunt is also good, both believably shallow and certifiably terrified when she hears Miranda's voice. When she walks into the boss's office, that clacking sound you hear isn't her mile-high heels but her knees knocking together.

Hathaway continues to impress. Woefully undervalued for her work in "Brokeback Mountain," she really shines here, as both a gawky fish out of water and a bright young woman trying to convince herself it's OK to sell her writer's soul for a Gucci bag.

And Streep is almost guaranteed to have bagged yet another Oscar nomination. She doesn't make Miranda a caricatured monster, nor does she play for sympathy. Instead, she keeps Miranda cool, quiet and commanding — someone able to paralyze underlings with her Medusa stare — and keeps her voice at a moderate, reasonable tone, as if to mask the fact she is anything but.

She looks amazing, too.

A tale of sex, lies and bulimia, "The Devil Wears Prada" is a classic underdog story, as applicable to a fashion magazine as it is to a law firm or a movie studio. These Byzantine survival tactics aren't merely Victoria's Secrets; they're everyone's.