PLOT: Twenty years later, Andy (Anne Hathaway), having been downsized from her job in hard journalism, returns to Runway as its new Features Editor, putting her into conflict with her old boss, Miranda (Meryl Streep).
REVIEW: Despite only being twenty years old, The Devil Wears Prada can’t help but feel like a real period piece, with it having been made as perhaps the tail end of the Sex and the City era, where journalism could be presented as an impossibly glamorous, high-paying job offering entrée into a rarefied New York high society that—now—is far more sealed off than it ever was before. It predated the Great Recession, the pandemic, and AI—three things that have decimated the industry, leaving magazines that were once giants floundering as the world moved on from them.
The Devil Wears Prada 2 could have pretended that none of this happened and simply worked as a piece of escapist fluff, but to its credit, it confronts the fact that the world has changed, and that a magazine such as Runway is no longer an untouchable behemoth. While still fun and frothy, there’s more meat on the bone than expected in this highly anticipated sequel, which sees director David Frankel and writer Aline Brosh McKenna returning in solid form.
In this sequel, Meryl Streep’s Miranda Priestly is still iconic, but she’s shown to be slipping, with her continued tenure at Runway only assured by the continued patronage of the magazine’s owner, Irv. She can no longer afford to be as casually cruel to her staff as she once was, with her new assistant, Simone Ashley’s Amari, more of a minder to make sure she doesn’t get into too much trouble. However, when Runway runs a fawning write-up of a company that operates sweatshops, Miranda is on the verge of being cancelled, so Andy—who goes viral for a public screed against the billionaires who just scrapped the newspaper she works at—gets a call.
Now, lest you think The Devil Wears Prada 2 is too self-serious, don’t fret. It still has a cavalcade of fashion, along with a long trip to Milan, but it does show that the rich lives they are all leading are only possible thanks to the largesse of whoever owns them—who can scrap them on a whim. This mirrors what’s happening among many huge, formerly untouchable pieces of legacy media. Look at Vanity Fair or Rolling Stone. They still exist, but they aren’t what they once were.
Hathaway’s Andy is once again an easy-to-like protagonist, as she gets seduced by the perks of the job—such as the clothes and the trips—but she’s less of a pushover for Miranda, who isn’t the giant she once was. Emily Blunt’s character also returns, now a senior exec at Dior who’s dating a Jeff Bezos-style billionaire, played by Justin Theroux. Of everyone, the one who perhaps shines the brightest is Stanley Tucci, who returns as the sharp-tongued but kindly Nigel, cycling through perhaps the highest-end fashion you’ll see on a man outside of a James Bond movie.
Some cast members are wasted, though, with Kenneth Branagh having little more than a few walk-on scenes as Miranda’s supportive husband. Hathaway also gets a romantic interest in Patrick Brammall’s good-natured Australian contractor, but their relationship is given comparatively little screen time—perhaps in response to the fact that people hated Andy’s boyfriend character so much in the first film.
Visually, The Devil Wears Prada 2 is well lensed by Florian Ballhaus, who also shot the first film, but I must admit the difference between the digital photography in this one and the warm 35mm shooting in the first is striking. I prefer the latter, but such is no doubt a sign of the times.
Overall, I was surprised by how much I enjoyed The Devil Wears Prada 2, as I actually wasn’t much of a fan of the first film. It delivers fans what they want, but it also has some brains behind it, with knowing nods at how high-end fashion—once attainable—is now little more than a status symbol for the elites. The film still celebrates the escapism and excess of such a life, but also acknowledges how fleeting it all is, even for those who seem to have “made it” in an industry that’s on its last legs.