You might hate her guts (as her personal assistants are surely wont to do), but devilish diva and Runway magazine chief editor Miranda Priestly is precisely what makes 'The Devil Wears Prada' loads more fab and fun than it might have been, or has any right to be.

A few years back, Lauren Weisberger wrote a roman à clef recalling her hellish days as personal assistant to Vogue magazine editor-in-chief Anna Wintour. In the book the Devil was named Miranda Priestly, and Runway magazine served as Vogue's alter ego. Apparently, the hot-selling novel devotes a ton of pages to Ms Weisberger's tale of woe under La Anna's reign of terror. Now such a story would find little favour with me as wretched whining and annoying victimhood are not my idea of a fun read. Fortunately, the film adaptation improves upon this by, among other things, plumping up (metaphorically speaking, of course) the Priestly character and adding a more human dimension. Whatever actor Meryl Streep adds on-screen will further pull us to her side - ostensibly either for or against the film's utterly confused intent.

We know right off that Miranda Priestly wields tremendous power in the fashion world. (Is her last name an intentional pun, as designers quiver before her as before a fashion priestess or oracle? It also happens to rhyme quite nicely with 'beastly'.) Given 'the dreaded pursed lip' sign by Miranda during previews, the unlucky fashion designer must chuck his entire collection into the rubbish heap and begin anew.

In the adrenaline-charged, hyperkinetic, image-driven world of fashion, things can change in a flash. To remain at the top of her game, Miranda relies heavily on her personal assistants to manage her calls, appointments, meetings, social/business events, personal errands, and a million and one other details large and small that she decides need attention from her huge staff of, well, two - secretary/personal assistant/slaves, that is.

We're unsure about how Andrea 'Andy' Sachs lands the interview for second personal assistant to Miranda Priestly. She's completely ignorant of Priestly's stature in the industry - a genuine shock to Emily, Priestly's former second personal assistant now promoted to first, since the former first has been promoted elsewhere. She's never read Runway and - worst of all horrors! - she shows absolutely zero fashion sense as revealed by the outfit she shows up in for the interview.

Briefly spying Andy's new face en route to her desk one morning, Priestly quietly snorts to Emily, 'Who's that?' Flustered and nervous as always, Emily blurts out, 'Ehrm - nobody!' then quickly corrects herself. She informs Miranda that she's the new applicant whom she has yet to pre-interview, and anyway, the girl doesn't seem right for the job. At which point Miranda quickly decides to interview the girl herself, pointing out Emily's previously proven incompetence at getting her good help.

The next scene captures in a few brief moments the intimidating persona of Miranda. To Miranda's pointed 'Who are you?', Andy begins relating her stint at Northwestern University, where she's a journalism student hoping to eventually work at the New Yorker - but before she can speak further, Priestly interrupts her: 'And what are you doing here?', all the while she's flipping through a tabloid and throwing quick glances up at Andy. After the ten-second interview in which her fashion failings are bluntly noted, Andy slinks away, certain she's lost the position. But lo and behold, she's hired (or else there wouldn't be a story now, would there?)!

Andy immediately gets frantic, on-the-job training, with little coaching from the jumpy Emily. One spurious premise of the film insists that the newly-hired Andy (played by the winsome Anne Hathaway) is considered unattractive by everyone at the Runway offices. As a comic line highlighting the absurdity of the fashionista's extreme ideal, Miranda even refers to Andy as 'the smart and fat one (she's a US size 6!), despite her willowy figure and large, dark eyes. Of course, the clothes are at fault here. The anticipated wardrobe makeover soon follows, with help from Miranda's art director, Nigel.

So Andy's work days (like Emily's) are consumed by ringing up contacts, confirming or deconfirming meets, picking up Miranda's dry cleaning, walking her St. Bernard, buying her morning coffee, darting perilously between cars in downtown Manhattan with her mobile glued to her ear as she totes oversized shopping bags and balances a tray or two of Starbucks. Soon her boyfriend, Nate, and friends, Lilly and Doug, are seeing less and less of her as she practically goes 'on call' for Miranda 24/7.

Well, yes, Miranda Priestly is a royal bitch, imperious, haughty, dismissive, and unsympathetic to other people's ('underlings' - which comprise nearly everyone else) feelings…nay, to other people's very existence - except as they relate to the work she's tasked to do: to put out, month after month, 'The Book': Runway, THE fashion showcase for the latest offerings from the fashion leaders.

In this thorny land of glitz and glam, where art, beauty, money, image and egos meet in a controlled chaos, scathing humiliations laced with acid wit are the order of the day. Survival and success require one to be hyperalert at all times, to develop the hide of a pachyderm, and to learn to parry and thrust like everyone else. But first, one must know one's place in the totem pole. Whiners at the ground level are most certainly not indispensable beings. It's a lesson that the art director, Nigel, teaches Andy in so many words.

Running to Nigel seeking consolation one evening, she gets nothing of the sort; instead he gives her something more invaluable: advice to adjust her attitude. He suggests quitting, if she's so unhappy in the job. And does she? Would she? After hearing the oft-repeated comment, 'Millions of girls in New York would kill/die for this job'? And toss out the chance to land a prime spot in any New York publication if she lives through this eternal period of demeaning servitude?

Are you kidding?

And so Andy begins what her friends dub her passage to the Dark Side. However, given what little characterization we have of supposed heroine Andy, the decision she later takes at the film's climactic moment strikes me as implausible. (There are potential spoilers later on, but curious readers who don't mind knowing all can read more about this plot turn in the ****Potential Plot Spoiler Alert**** section below.)

One ordinarily expects to despise Miranda and her world. At film's end, it was Miranda, however, who evoked my sympathy more than holier-than-thou Andy and friends.

After her latest divorce, workaholic Miranda can spare little time for nursing her wounds. The film suggests that the 'career-obsessed' editor must suffer for devoting more hours of her day to The Book than to family. But we all know that Miranda's a survivor: no one gets to the top by being nice all the time. In the last analysis, it's her skills, artistic sense and instincts that have brought her where she is now, not her abrasiveness. In the fast-paced, constantly changing landscape of the fashion world, Miranda has continued to meet the challenges and needs of her high-flying position. (And from what little I've gleaned of the industry, such is par for the course. 'Unzipped', a fascinating film documenting Isaac Mizrahi's nerve-wracking, frenetic preparations for a 1994 fall fashion show suggests as much.)

It's true that bosses from hell can sport both X and Y chromosomes, but you wonder: would Miranda Priestly draw similarly vicious, vengeful venom if she were a male boss? While Miranda does show hints of humanity, she never, ever lets her guard down. At a low point in her boss' personal life, Andy is touched by Miranda's situation and asks what she can do to help. Miranda, forever work-minded, replies, 'Your job,' and hands her a folder.

**** Potential Plot Spoiler Alert **** Read at Your Own Risk ****

Oh, yes, a word about Andy's friends. It's as if boyfriend Nate's work in haute cuisine deserves more humanitarian awards than Andy's does in haute couture. Do her friends toss out the $10K+ Bang & Olufsen phone in disgust? Does Lilly refuse a free designer bag given by Andy? And does Lilly's photography exhibits really trump the couturiers' in the earth-saving and down-home values departments? So much for the alleged 'integrity' and 'goodness' of Andy's pals.

Andy might be loath to admit it, but she possesses a similar ambition to Miranda's at a younger age. A later scene has Miranda telling Andy the same. Was she then grooming her for life in the success lane? Then there's also the matter of the cosmopolitan writer, Christian Thompson, with whom Andy starts flirting later on.

I felt that Andy's turnaround during the highest point of her early career rings false, and not too wise. But 'The Devil Wears Prada' seems to want it both ways. On the one hand, guilt and punishment (loss of friends; another failed marriage) will befall the work-obsessed - work should never receive such a high priority - especially one built solely on surfaces and image; on the other, it implies that success cannot be had in any other way than through solid, hard work, and perhaps, a few vital connexions. The filmmakers might have gone with this plot turn that feels like a cop-out just to please the PC police, falsely conceding that Andy's friends alone hold the moral high ground.

**** End Potential Plot Spoiler Alert ****

Despite her top billing, Anne Hathaway as Andy Sachs barely registers in our memory at the end. She does what she reasonably can with the blandly written role of Andy. Meanwhile, Adrien Grenier holds little attraction as rising chef-boyfriend Nate, moping drearily about Andy's increasing absences. Tracie Thoms (Lilly) and Rich Sommer (Doug) complete the trio of friends, and contribute competent work. So does the more hunkily attractive Simon Baker, playing Andy's fling-mate, Christian Thompson. (The cuter choice, methinks!)

However, the picture really belongs to Mesdames Streep and Blunt, and Monsieur Tucci, who run gorgeously, glibly and gracefully away with it. Under director David Frankel's guidance, they bring the witty and urbane script (by Aline Brosh McKenna) to life. Every scene with them crackles with little explosive comments and zingers.

Meryl Streep does Miranda Priestly to exquisitely comic perfection. With her carefully coiffed silver hair, stylish clothes and economy of movement, Ms Streep embodies the knowing self-confidence and steely elegance of the truly powerful who know exactly what they want, what they like, and what don't like. Not least of all, there's the quintessential Miranda phrase with which she ends each and every order snapped at her peons - 'That's all.' - said simply, quietly and quickly, and means, 'I'm done with you. Now get out of my sight and back to your work.' It's deliciously wicked fun to watch Ms Streep here, and you find yourself eagerly awaiting the next cutting remark to escape her lips.

As the stoic Nigel, Stanley Tucci wisely underplays his role. Nigel trudges on as best he can, and suffers in smiling silence even when a major disappointment hits much later. Like the rest of the staff, Nigel puts up with Priestly's divaish behaviour in hopes of receiving a return favour one day for all the good work he's done for the magazine. He isn't one to whine, and hope springs eternal within him. He also comes the closest at work to a friend to Andy.

Playing her film namesake, the fantastic English actress Emily Blunt (mark the name, dearies) captures with remarkable authenticity that mix of arrogance and terrorized obsequiousness of the personal assistant-to-a-VIP-boss-from-hell. She creates a delicate balance of ridicule and sympathy for Emily, forever struggling at her thankless job. She neither slips into cheap slapstick nor resorts to emotional exaggeration in portraying the permanently distressed personal assistant. The seeming haughtiness of a clipped British accent doesn't hurt the part, either.

Watching 'The Devil Wears Prada', I found to my (unpleasant and disappointing) surprise that yes, I can truly be as shallow and superficial as those fashionistas I used to scorn. Yup, the glossy, glamourous, high style world of haute couture did cast a spell upon me. I salivated over those fabulous outfits on Ms Streep (put together by Patricia Field, whose previous credits include the hit TV show, 'Sex and the City'). I felt the vicarious thrill that attends the opening of a new show in Paris, complete with popping flashbulbs, thumping music (mostly by ex-Versace fronter Madonna), and pouting models strutting their glittering, gossamer and gaudy stuff on the catwalk. And I oohed and ahhed on seeing those breathtakingly lovely Parisian landmarks once more.

Finally, the film does a fleeting, serious take on the industry that's most likely aimed at snooty fashion-scoffers out there: when Andy lets out a disdainful giggle at the fuss over a belt, Miranda launches into a mini-monologue spoken with withering condescension. In a smoothly executed scene, she explains how decisions taken in the fashion houses affect how Andy's own cerulean blue sweater eventually pops up in 'those bargain bins at Casual Corner'. Well, she might be right about this, you know, although I've also read others who've taken strong exception to this premise, too.

In summing up this novel of a post, then, I can say that I've rarely enjoyed a modern comedy as much as I did 'The Devil Wears Prada'. I'm ashamed to admit - well, not all that ashamed, after all - that on this one, I am * so * rooting for the Devil. Four-and-a-half stars.

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[Just a note for the plagiarism police:
This review has been posted elsewhere on the 'net by the same author, under a different alias, and in extensively modified form.]