Apocalypse now

So it finally happened. I finally read a book that was decidedly worse than the movie. I know. I know. I am shocked my own self, but here's the thing, y'all. The Devil Wears Prada is bad. Baaaaad. It's not well-written; the characters are little more than cliches; and, since I'd seen the movie first, the outrageous behavior of the titular character did not shock or delight or whatever me. I mean, seriously, Miranda Priestly on a printed page absolutely pales in comparison to Meryl Streep. Now. I didn't even like the movie all that much, but Meryl Streep and Emily Blunt managed to make it mostly enjoyable. And Stanley Tucci! Who doesn't even exist in the novel, so. The movie took a lot of creative liberty, which was good, because the book was long and boring and didn't really tell a compelling story, but it still ended up with a plot identical to that of the film version of The Princess Diaries. (What is up with that, Anne Hatheway? Seriously. The only other Anne Hatheway movie I've seen is Brokeback Mountain, which obviously bears no resemblance to that plot, but what of her other films? I wonder...)

Basically, the novel sucked; the movie was only enjoyable because of the actors. In fact, I would watch it again right now just for Emily Blunt. I even liked The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants better as a novel. And that movie had Alexis Bledel in her underwear! So, for real. The Devil Wears Prada is bad. Sorry, Lauren Weisberger. Oh, wait! Here's a thing that she did that I hate that I just remembered. Allegedly, Miranda Priestly is based upon uber-bitch Anna Wintour, editor of Vogue, which is just fine, but then at the end of the novel, Miranda actually encounters Anna Wintour at some Paris fashion hootenany, and our narrator remarks that Anna and Miranda are always being compared, because they're both fashion bitches who put out important magazines. Like, leave it alone! If you're basing a character on someone real, leave the real person out of the story. That's just so dumb. And heavy-handed. Like, just in case you didn't see the similarities I'd drawn between my character and this real life fashion editor, LET ME POINT IT OUT FOR YOU LIKE THIS.

I need to stop ending paragraphs with all this yelling.