Or, as I like to call it “The Devil Wears Product Placement.” Theoretically, I should have some sort of bone to pick with this movie. But I don’t. It is very entertaining. Meryl Streep & Stanley Tucci rule and Anne Whatsername looks good running around Midtown, Tribeca and Paris in expensive boots. What can I say?
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Jordan Hoffman is a New York-based writer and film critic working for The Guardian, Vanity Fair, Thrillist, Times of Israel, NY Daily News and elsewhere.
He is the host of ENGAGE: The Official Star Trek Podcast, a member of the New York Film Critics Circle and challenges you to a game of backgammon.
Caught this over the weekend, too, when I got the wrong time for Scanner Darkly and went to this instead.
I thought it was fantastic. I’ve worked for/with Streep types, and boy, did she ever nail it. I strongly suspect they made her too “human” in comparison to the book, which I haven’t read, so the audience would find some redeeming value in her character.
But it’s been my experience that folks that high on the food chain, in that kind of mind frame, don’t sweat kids, divorces or anything like that. It’s all about the money/power, and everything else is a long second. Which is fine — just felt that the film maker went a little too far out of his way to assure us Stree’s character was human, like us. I didn’t need it. I’ve worked for folks like that. THey don’t need it either. You know what they’re about from the second you meet them, and you either get squared away with them and their obvious agendas, or you get the fuck out of their way.
Also … the assistant’s job, aside from the shitty hours, didn’t really seem that bad. IN point, Streep’s character has the assistant run out to Smith & Wollensky’s to get a steak … which she later refuses because she’s having lunch somewhere else. Assistant, angry that she had to run out to get it, smashes the steak and plate in the sink.
Fuck … I would have bagged that thing, took it home, warmed it up and had a nice steak dinner, gratis. There were a lot of moments like that in the movie where I thought, “Is this really that bad a job to have?”