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Trailer for "The Devil Wears Prada"

As the editor of a Manhattan-based fashion magazine (think Vogue) so powerful that the merest pursing of her lips can send entire fall lines to the dumpster, Meryl Streep pulls off a performance with one simple tactic: She never varies her voice from a monotone or raises it above a whisper. She strides through her offices ignoring her staff and muttering to herself that she doesn’t understand why it’s so hard to get the simplest things done, and she’s a hoot.

But this isn’t the kind of character you can build a feature film around, at least not one that you want to make millions of dollars. And so The Devil Wears Prada stars Anne Hathaway as an idealistic journalism school graduate who wants to write about real things like underpaid janitors. She lucks into a job with Streep that she is determined to keep for a year as a stepping stone to better things. This means, however, that she not only has to endure smirks about being the “smart fat girl” (she’s a size six in a world where her peers brag about how long they can go without eating) but that she also has to pretend that high fashion is something of value to the world at large.

Prada is aimed squarely at the audiences who loved Hathaway in The Princess Diary films but who are now old enough to want something a little more adult. Despite the presence of a live-in (and clearly non-platonic) boyfriend, though, Hathaway is still playing a princess determined to triumph through virtue and what Lou Grant famously identified in Mary Richards on the first episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show as “spunk.” Older viewers—those above, say, 22—can enjoy both Streep and the bitchiness of co-star Stanley Tucci, as the magazine’s art director, whose wardrobe seems to consist primarily of Spike Jones’ castoffs. But they won’t be able to take any of it seriously: That’s reserved for younger viewers, who will learn otherwise soon enough.