Everyone always says that the book is better than the movie. I can rattle off a list of books right now where the book was so much better than the movie adaption.
However, there are some movies that shine brighter than the books they’re based on. Perhaps it’s an advice book about what to expect when you’re expecting or an infamous diary of a young British woman and her love for Mr. Darcy. They all have something in common and that is, the movie is better than the book.
I’m currently reading The Devil Wears Prada by Lauren Weisberger in-between books of The Grisha Trilogy. At first, I thought it was about a young woman who comes to New York to become a writer. She gets a job at Runway, a made-up fashion magazine, working for the most hated Editor-in-Chief, Miranda Priestley. Pretty much the same as the movie. I thought the rest of the story would just follow, all the scenes that culminated to her quitting at the end.
However, the book isn’t written out that way. It feels like a bunch of different vignettes with no real storyline. Maybe it’s because I’m only 130 pages into the novel, but I honestly don’t get how this book is moving itself. Honestly, it feels like a rant. Every page reads like another whiny story about how Andy can’t cut it as an assistant and how difficult life is. Boohoo.
When this movie first came out, I was actually working in magazines. I was an intern at Jane magazine right before it folded and after seeing the movie, I was pretty sure I was living the same life Andrea Sachs had. Everything they said about editors at fashion magazines was true. I worked long hours in a small fashion closet, organizing products, getting coffee, running errands. I rarely stepped out of the office and when I did, it was because I was stopping at the Chanel showroom to pick up accessories for a FOB piece we were writing.
It was one grueling task after another, but did I complain? No. I have the freaking work ethic of a farm horse and if I wanted to be working in magazines after I finished college, I needed to put in my dues. By the time I left the magazine, I was one of the more trusted interns who was helping lay out shoots and telling the other interns what to do.
That’s what you had to do and while movie Andy did have her moments of nearly giving up, ultimately, she worked her ass off enough to be invited to Paris. All I hear from book Andy is the complaining.
There are some limitations when it comes to movies and books. For one thing, the movie needs to be compelling and sell tickets. I feel like books don’t have the same pressure to exceed the amount of effort and money it takes to make it. I guess it’s because you don’t have some award winning actors, directors, producers, and screen writers working on it or millions or billions of dollars spent.
So movies do take their liberties, cut and paste the scenes of books that they feel would definitely make for a great movie, cast people depending on their status in Hollywood, perhaps even a little white washing. The unsuspecting reader goes to the movies with the same excitement they had when reading the book and what do they find? Disappointment.
But when the book has the few pieces compelling enough to drive the story and the rest just seems trite, that’s when these big movie producers come in and really make gold from shit.
I’m sorry to say, Andy, but this book is a shit and those movie producers were smart enough to turn it into a little pot of gold. I don’t think this movie did super well, but I’ll basically love any movie that has Meryl Streep in it.
I’ll probably read this till the end and perhaps my perceptions will change by that time, but for now, I can’t say I would recommend this book to anyone.
That’s all.
Simone and Her Books 