EVERYONE loves a Cinderella makeover, especially when its setting is catapulted in time to the formidably spotless, lacquered world of modern fashion magazines. The makers of "The Devil Wears Prada" seem, in fact, to be banking on it. Which may be why they inserted a fairy tale metamorphosis into the heart of the film based on Lauren Weisberger's best-selling roman à clef about an earnest journalism grad who becomes an assistant to the impossibly exacting editor of Runway, the country's most powerful fashion magazine.

When the movie arrives in theaters tomorrow, some audience members may writhe with envy watching as Andy Sachs (Anne Hathaway), the style-challenged lackey to Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep), sheds her scullery-maid persona for that of a smugly preening style princess. Some will likely fall under the spell cast by David Frankel, the director of "The Devil Wears Prada," who aimed, he said, to fuse fantasy — "the wish fulfillment of going to this magical kingdom of fashion" — with a sense of authenticity.

Did he hit his mark? To a point. But to the unforgiving eye of insiders who attended a flurry of advance screenings, Andy's swag-laden trip to the ball has about as much relation to reality as New York City does to Kankakee.

"Where is the chic?" groused David Wolfe, a New York fashion and retail consultant well versed in the eccentricities of real-life magazine divas. In his assessment, the film's stylistic problems begin with Meryl Streep as the silver-coiffed Miranda, a character he thinks looks far too bland and bankerlike and ugh! — far too pretty — to be convincing as Runway's chilly commander in chief.