Welcome to the resistance, Miranda Priestly. Not even the die-hard loyalists of 2006’s fashion satire The Devil Wears Prada expected much from its return to the big screen: a “cerulean sweater” callback, certainly, alongside some washed out lighting and plenty of egregious product placement. All are, unfortunately, present in The Devil Wears Prada 2 – get ready to play a hypercapitalist Where’s Wally? with all the snuck-in Diet Coke cans. Yet the sequel has also seemingly come out of nowhere to deliver what might be the most trenchant, committed portrait made about the state of contemporary journalism.
In the film’s punch-the-air climax, Meryl Streep’s Miranda, the imperious overseer of Runway magazine, locks that X-ray vision of hers onto some gilet-fitted investor (BJ Novak) and lambasts the encroachment of AI into the media space as an affront to “human achievement”. It’s not exactly All the President’s Men, but we’re in a dire situation – it’ll do nicely.
And it’s a surprise primarily because the film’s publicity campaign has gone out of its way to sell a much worse, much more hollow effort from returning writer Aline Brosh McKenna and director David Frankel. None of those Starbucks tie-ins, handbag-shaped popcorn buckets, and trailers consisting solely of Anne Hathaway swishing around those silky tresses of hers have given any indication that The Devil Wears Prada 2 opens with her character, writer Andy Sachs, being made redundant from her job at the prestigious New York Vanguard via text.
She’s coaxed back to Runway, where she once served as an assistant to Priestly and learned that fashion is serious work, in order to smooth out a scandal in which the magazine was duped into lavishing praise on a sweatshop brand. But, while Andy can certainly write a beautifully earnest mea culpa for Runway, no one actually reads it, because all that matters now are the tiny snippets of information people absorb while doomscrolling on the toilet.
Fashion director Nigel (Stanley Tucci) has had his budget slashed, while Andy’s former rival Emily (Emily Blunt) has jumped ship entirely to serve the commercial world and cosy up to smarmy tech billionaires (Justin Theroux, reliably funny). Even the film’s inevitable, happy conclusion is swiftly undercut by the reminder it could (and probably will) all be taken away from them tomorrow.
So yes, The Devil Wears Prada 2 hits painfully home, and perpetual job insecurity is hardly exclusive to the media world. Yet even for those who can’t relate, there’s still plenty of the indulgent, fondant pleasures to take part in. To continue tradition, Andy has a new boyfriend (Patrick Brammall) you can’t help but root against (this time he’s a property developer… boo!), while Kenneth Branagh plays the violin and wears some lovely scarves as Miranda’s ever-supportive spouse.
The main quartet were so well-suited to their original roles that all Streep needs to do is play thoughtfully with a beaded necklace and, instantly, it’s like Miranda never left us. Andy is no longer the naïf, but we’ve enjoyed two decades of increasingly confident, impassioned characters from Hathaway, so the maturation is basically a given. Blunt happily walks away with some of the best line deliveries (when Andy pushes back on Emily’s declaration that luxury fashion is more accessible than ever with the question who, exactly, can afford a $3,000 bag, she snorts back, “Have you heard of Christmas?”)
Costume designer Molly Rogers, meanwhile, replicates the first film’s ethos of bland but easily marketable looks, with plenty of corsets worn over crisp, white shirts and a T-bar necklace permanently around Andy’s neck. To the film’s credit, there’s also real style tucked into the periphery, as characters breeze past Richard Quinn florals and Lady Gaga, still in her Tim Burton demon era, performs on a runway of models in loose, patterned Seventies gowns and oversized hats. It’s a compromise. But, then, that’s what The Devil Wears Prada 2 has turned out to be all about – it’s artistry snuck in beneath the commerce.
Dir: David Frankel. Starring: Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway, Emily Blunt, Justin Theroux, Kenneth Branagh, Stanley Tucci. Cert 12A, 119 minutes.
‘The Devil Wears Prada 2’ is in cinemas from 1 May
