Annie (Johansson) and Grayer (Art) looking unamused Credit: MGM

Having set the standard for contemporary chick-lit adaptations, The Devil Wears Prada is a tough act to follow. The clothes, the attitude, the scene-stealing, Oscar-nominated work from Meryl Streep - anything would pale by comparison.

Based on the 2002 guilty-pleasure read by former New York nannies Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus, the film has a strong cast (Scarlett Johansson, Laura Linney, Paul Giamatti) and fleeting moments of dead-on satire. It remains essentially true to the book with a few tweaks here and there, until it loses its bite and suddenly goes all soft and gushy at the end.

In rare regular-person mode, the va-va-voomy Johansson capably stars as Annie Braddock, a young woman who's unsure of what to do with her life after college. She wants to be an anthropologist, while her more practical mother (Donna Murphy) wants her to transcend her working-class New Jersey upbringing with a career in finance.

After a miserable job interview, Annie literally stumbles into a nanny gig for a posh couple on Manhattan's Upper East Side (Linney and Giamatti) and their bratty son, Grayer (Nicholas Reese Art). To protect the guilty, the couple has been dubbed Mr. and Mrs. X in the both the book and the movie.