TOP 25 CAMP FILMS OF ALL TIME - 25

THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA

Anne Hathaway plays naive Andrea "Andy" Sachs. She gets a job at Runway magazine as assistant to editor in chief Miranda Priestly aka Meryl Streep in a wild silver wig.

Andy rebels against the fashion conscious crowd at Runway and sees herself as a serious journalist in the frothy world of fashion and high glam and higher stakes. Eventually she gets a hold of the fashion wardrobes at Runway, discovers Chanel jackets and Louboutin slingbacks and becomes the best assistant ever imaginable but pays the price by neglecting her ridiculously hot boyfriend and her family.

Swept up in the hairspray and thin-ness, Andy heads to Paris for the shows, feels like rescuing Miranda who definitely doesn't need rescued and chips her cellphone in a fountain before heading out of Runway but somehow managing to keep her head and her good Chanel fashion style. Sorry for ruining the ending but it is rather predictable but fabulously so.

This movie is camp in so many levels. It is supposedly based on Editrix Anna "Nuclear" Wintour being played by ice queen Meryl Streep. She cuts off all her employees by saying "That's all" at the drop of a hairpin or clutch bag and manoueveres herself into an uber strong position at Runway with no regard for her long time staff who worship her. Every gay man would love to do and say what Miranda Priestly says and does which in itself is a camp outrage. Throw into this the endless racks of fabulous clothes, shoes and various accessories and it's a veritable feast.

Meryl is so bitchy but nowhere near as bitchy as Emily. The British bitchy assistant who makes life hell for Andy played so well by Emily Blunt. She has a killer wardrobe and insults Andy at any given opportunity and is friends with Giselle Bundchen who has a cameo. So does Valentino. It's already a wet dream of trash. It's so quotable, I remember going to the flicks to see this with a beau and he said he would love to be Miranda Priestly when she dresses down Andy about a belt in the colour of cerulean. And the good clothes, hot men and women and good clothes and catwalks and good clothes and soundtrack and good clothes make it so much more enjoyable. It's that type of film.

MIRANDA - I said to myself, go ahead. Take a chance. Hire the smart, fat girl. I had hope.

EMILY to ANDY - I'm sorry, do you have some prior commitment? Some hideous skirt convention you have to go to?

EMILY to ANDY - You sold your soul to the devil when you put on your first pair of Jimmy Choo's, I saw it.

ANDY - Wish me luck
EMILY - No. Shan't

MIRANDA - You have no sense of fashion
ANDY - I think that depends on....
MIRANDA - No, no, that wasn't a question.

EMILY - You went upstairs? Why didn't you just crawl into bed with her ask a bedtime story?

ANDY - Y'know, it's just that both those belts look exactly the same to me. Y'know, I'm still learning about all this stuff.
MIRANDA - This... 'stuff'? Oh... ok. I see, you think this has nothing to do with you. You go to your closet and you select out, I don't know, that lumpy blue sweater, for instance, because you're trying to tell the world that you take yourself too seriously to care about what you put on your back. But what you don't know is that that sweater is not just blue, it's not turquoise, it's not lapis, it's actually cerulean. You're also blithely unaware of the fact that in 2002, Oscar De La Renta did a collection of cerulean gowns. And then I think it was Yves St Laurent, wasn't it, who showed cerulean military jackets? And then cerulean quickly showed up in the collections of 8 different designers. Then it filtered down through the department stores and then trickled on down into some tragic casual corner where you, no doubt, fished it out of some clearance bin. However, that blue represents millions of dollars and countless jobs and so it's sort of comical how you think that you've made a choice that exempts you from the fashion industry when, in fact, you're wearing the sweater that was selected for you by the people in this room. From a pile of stuff.