A couple of Wednesdays ago I sat at the back of the cinema with my divine Gay Best Friend, waiting for the lights to go down and brimming with anticipation. God knows about two weeks into term anybody's in need of a splash of light relief, so we figured Devil Wears Prada would be a good choice. Nice slab of romance, served with a splash of comedy and trimmed with a generous dollop of pretty shoes.

But somewhere, something had gone wrong. The film managed to wring the odd halfhearted laugh out of me, but in general I just found it depressing.

The fundamental problem was, quite apart from a plot that was about as predictable as a ham sandwich, that for a film that's supposedly a comedy, it took itself altogether too seriously. From the word go, the film declared 'I have a moral!' Not just in a small and inconspicuous way. It had a town crier, ringing his bell, announcing 'Have you noticed my moral yet?' He was holding a big sign of the kind normally seen advertising golf sales 'MORAL THIS WAY', not to mention the neon lights flashing 'There's a moral to this you know!' It stuffed it down my throat till I was retching it up in someone else's shrubbery. That wasn't exactly what I'd signed up for.

Not that I have anything against the moral. Obsession with fashion is bad. Being on a diet where you eat a cube of cheese when you're about to pass out is very bad. Being willing to deliberately destroy dreams to get to the top and stay there is just plain evil. But the problem isn't with fashion in itself. Yes the 'stilletto' girls are vain, vapid and bitchy; but they're no worse than anyone else who thinks too highly of themselves or has an unhealthy obsession.

The other problem with that sort of moral is its damn hard to make in a film where the 'fashionable' girls look so devastatingly PRETTY. Some of the outfits were a little ridiculous (the studded suede contraption sported by the irritating first assistant in her first appearance was frankly bizarre), but for the most part my overriding feeling towards them was a resounding 'oooh! Shiny!' And they did hang oh-so-beautifully off actresses chosen because they were size 8 or smaller.

My overwhelming feeling as the heroine strutted purposefully off to her new sensible job reporting on unionising janitors, now back together with her perfect boyfriend, and still looking frankly damn trendy, was not admiration for her, or disgust with the fashion elite, nor even amusement at the film. It was more of an 'Oh God why am I so fat and ugly and badly dressed'.

Thankfully that rapidly dispersed as my divine GBF strutted off purposefully -- directly to the soothing comfort of Oxford's premiere ice cream parlour.