The Devil Wears Prada (film)/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Alternate Character Interpretation:
    • There have been many articles and YouTube videos arguing that Nate is the real villain of the movie. Yes Miranda is a Mean Boss and manipulative, but she is upfront about who and what she is to Andy. Nate tries to judge Andy for doing her job, while he is a chef and argues that a career needs integrity. The Take has a different approach: Nate is concerned about Andy's wellbeing as this job involves her taking emotional abuse over a year in a toxic workplace culture and just has a poor way of expressing it. Anne Hathaway herself has said that Nate and Andy were in their twenties, when people are still growing, so it's not fair to demonize either of them while Nate's actor Adrian Grenier agrees with the interpretation that Nate was an asshole.
    • It's unclear ultimately why Miranda screwed over the loyal and hardworking Nigel but gave Andy the recommendation for a journalism position. Nigel always showed up to work and gave 110 percent, while Andy was half-hearted and only learned to take her job seriously when Nigel laid into her. One can hope that eventually Nigel got his dues and dream job.
  • Crowning Moment of Awesome:On very short notice, Andy is given the nearly-impossible task of getting an advance copy of the unreleased seventh Harry Potter book for Miranda's twin daughters. Miranda, who is displeased with Andy at the time, seems to have done this in order to punish Andy, and is probably trying to make her quit. To Miranda's surprise, Andy manages to track down a copy of the manuscript and returns to the office victorious.
    • On top of that, she managed to get two extra copies to Miranda's twin daughters on the train. Without Miranda's knowledge.
    • In an early scene, after Andy snickers at something said during a meeting, Miranda proceeds to lay a verbal smackdown on her, during which she dissects her character and details the impact of the fashion industry to make the point that Andy shouldn't consider herself above fashion.
  • Family-Unfriendly Aesop: Specifically, Ambition Is Evil. A popular criticism of the movie is that Andy is painted as having gone over to the dark side for having somewhat less time to spend with her boyfriend, family and friends, who are all constantly giving her shit for having a job they don't approve of and implying that she's probably bad at it anyway since they never knew her to be interested in fashion. And in spite of taking this approach, it also passes on the chance to do a Beautiful All Along -- Andy gives away most of her designer stuff at the end, but she remains the thinner, sleek-haired, flatteringly-made-up, well-dressed woman she learned to be working at Runway.
    • It is also worth noting that a key part of Andy's arc has to do with her relationship with her boyfriend, which gets rocky because he doesn't like the ways her job is "changing her" (it doesn't make sense in context either), or that she works such long hours. At one point we see Miranda and her husband arguing bitterly, evidently for similar reasons; and at the end of the film Miranda reveals that her husband has asked her for a divorce. Soon after this, Andy leaves her job and Miranda, tearfully apologizes to Nate and tells him that he was "right about everything". The take-home message is that women who want to have good relationships with men need to be willing to make sacrifices with regard to their careers. Gross!
    • An Aesop: "Don't become someone you're not just to advance your career, particularly in a 'dog-eat-dog' environment."
  • Hollywood Homely: This movie tries to pass off Anne Hathawaya s unattractive at the beginning, though it may have had more to do with her girl-next-door look and low-budget college wardrobe.
    • Actually, no, she wasn't meant to be unattractive. Meryl Streep and scriptwriter Aline Brosh McKenna have both said in interviews that this was intended as a comment on the ridiculous standards of the fashion industry. Anne is visibly not overweight at the beginning of the film, and is still called 'fat' by Nigel and Miranda, and universally mocked for her clothes.
    • In one interview Anne even goes on to defend Andy's wardrobe as she wore similar style herself when she was in/freshly out of college.
  • Magnificent Bitch: Miranda Priestly is maybe the film example of the decade.
  • The Woobie: Emily isn't the nicest person, but she certainly doesn't deserve the screw job she gets from the universe.
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