`PRADA' OFFERS DEVILISHLY GOOD TIME.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Critic

While adapting Lauren Weisberger's novel ``The Devil Wears Prada'' for the screen, someone remembered one of Satan's greatest skills is subtlety.

Or else they just didn't want audiences fleeing theaters in revulsion. Widely assumed to be inspired by Weisberger's stint as Vogue editor Anna Wintour's assistant, the book portrayed its fictional fashion magazine diva Miranda Priestly as a sadistic screamer.

Meryl Streep takes Priestly in a quieter direction. In the movie, the imperious editor of New York's most influential fashion bible, Runway magazine, hardly ever raises her voice above a low, insinuating purr. She doesn't need to, because what comes out of her mouth is always perfectly worded, deep-wound cutting and -- worst of all -- usually right. That, along with her dismissive body language and soul-strangling gaze, enables Miranda to destroy most anybody within seconds and with surgical precision. Especially if their livelihoods depend on her approval. And just about everyone's in Miranda's orbit does.

It's a wonderfully controlled and funny performance. Supreme actor that she is, Streep manages to convey that she's having a blast without once winking at the audience.

Despite her being its title character, though, the movie isn't about Miranda. Its heroine is Anne Hathaway's young Andy Sachs. Fresh out of Northwestern with a desire to do important journalism, the best job she can find is as Miranda's indentured creature.

It's a position Andy is spectacularly unsuited for. When she appears in Runway's offices for her interview, Miranda's naturally gay art director Nigel (Stanley Tucci, very good) asks out loud, ``Are we doing a before-and-after piece I don't know about?'' Declaring the adorable if off-the-rack- dressed Andy fat -- which, in Hathaway's case, is about as credible as the old eyeglass- removal, duckling-to-swan trick that didn't fool anybody in ``The Princess Diaries'' -- Miranda dismisses her with her standard ``that's all'' hiss.

But the editrix changes her mind and decides to give the smart girl a chance. Seems she's been disappointed by every Size 0 clacker (so-called for the sounds their Manolos make when they walk) who's tried to anticipate her whims and fulfill her impossible demands. Andy fails miserably at first, of course. But after weathering humiliation from all quarters (English actress Emily Blunt is a scream as Miranda's horrid, fashion-victim senior assistant), and a chic makeover courtesy of good-guy-after-all Nigel, Andy starts hitting 'em out of the park. Even Miranda is impressed by the new girl's abilities; she expresses approval by NOT slamming her coat and bag on Andy's desk every morning.

The story here is a simple one. Nice but ambitious Andy changes under the Runway influence into a workaholic that her friends and cute boyfriend, played by ``Entourage's'' Adrian Grenier, don't understand. As she develops the appearance-consciousness she once made fun of, lines such as ``You sold your soul the day you put on those Jimmy Choos'' get tossed about.

Hathaway has far too sensible a personality for us to worry that Andy will go too far wrong, though. And even if she does, well, what's really the harm? Maybe she'll become a little harder and lonelier and more pretentious, but would not achieving the thing she came to New York for, making it in the publishing business, be a happier fate?

Bob Strauss, [phone]

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THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA - Three stars

(PG-13: language, adult situations)

Starring: Anne Hathaway, Meryl Streep, Emily Blunt, Stanley Tucci, Adrian Grenier, Simon Baker.

Director: David Frankel.

Running time: 1 hr. 49 min.

Playing: In wide release.

In a nutshell: The scandalous novel about a dictatorial magazine editor and her tortured assistant is toned down for the movie, but Streep still manages to have great, nasty fun.