The Devil Wears Prada 2 ~ Review

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Honestly, I was going into The Devil Wears Prada 2 with extremely low expectations. To me, the new film seemed predicated on nothing more than millennial nostalgia, and, generally speaking, decades-after-the-fact legacy sequels are usually pretty bad. So, imagine my surprise when The Devil Wears Prada 2 actually made me feel things. Made me think about how the pleasures of modern life are slowly being squeezed to death by greed. How I got wrapped up in the fantasy of coming back to a toxic workplace and finding your old toxic boss giving you respect. This year has so many sequels and IP-driven films that it almost seems like original thought has been excised from the studio market, but here’s a sequel that actually has something to say.
 
It’s been twenty years since Andi Sachs (Anne Hathaway) left her position as second assistant to Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep) at high-fashion magazine Runway. In the intervening time, Andi has become a well-respected journalist who writes exposés about the federal reserve. Miranda, on the other hand, has continued to be the immovable object keeping Runway afloat. As the film opens, Andi and her colleagues are summarily fired from their jobs. The magazine they were working for has been acquired by a tech conglomerate, and they’re laying off the entire staff. Meanwhile, Miranda is having troubles of her own – the magazine is under fire for writing a puff piece about a clothing brand that uses sweatshop labor. To turn the optics around, the publisher hires Andi as the features editor of Runway, much to Miranda’s chagrin.
 
From there, the film mostly follows the structure of the original. Andi bumps against Miranda at every turn as she tries to get acclimated to her new position. Eventually, Andi turns things around with Miranda by using her wits and connections, but there’s trouble for the magazine, and it all climaxes at a fashion event in Europe (Paris in the original, Milan here). So, the film doesn’t earn any points for its narrative structure, but that’s okay, because Aline Brosh McKenna’s witty script fills the story with observations about the nature of the line goes up, greed must win mentality, which has infected every industry from journalism to fashion. McKenna uses the structure of the original Devil Wears Prada to also undergird a slight character study of Miranda Priestly herself – she’s still the immovable object from the unstoppable force of change, but she has changed.
 
Like McKenna, returning director David Frankel brings the same understated and manic energy he brought to the original, which really pulls into the high-gloss fashion world. Stanley Tucci and Streep slip back into their original roles with ease, trading barbs and hurling insults left and right. What is fascinating about the way Tucci and Streep play their respective parts is that you can see the weight of time on them…not just in the fact that the actors have aged, but their performances are loaded with decades of losses from devoting their entire lives to this magazine.
 
Also returning is Emily Blunt as Emily, who slips back into that bitchy energy like a glove. Hathaway is great as Andi, perfectly balancing the world-weary journalist vs the nervous kid-like energy she gets when back in Miranda’s presence.
 
Time eventually comes for us all, even high-end fashion magazines. But when the barbarians are at your door trying to destroy not just your livelihood but the industry you’ve devoted your life to, The Devil Wears Prada 2 seems to be saying that it’s time to push back. That human-made art and beauty matter. So, yeah, here’s a two decades after the fact sequel that matches the original.
 
Three and a half out of Four Stars