by Chris Bakker, Contributing Writer
In order to really talk about The Devil Wears Prada 2, I have to do what I imagine absolutely everyone who talks about movies is doing: compare it to Top Gun: Maverick.
When this movie opened with Andy (Anne Hathaway) wiping the condensation from her bathroom mirror while brushing her teeth, thereby opening the exact same way the original movie did, I immediately thought of the Top Gun opening. Maverick recreated it from the staging to the music, the framing to the opening text being word-for-word the same (save the addition of the words ‘and women’). The Devil Wears Prada 2 does not recreate its opening titles from the original; there’s no montage of women getting ready for work, choosing outfits and leaving the house to commute to the office with Andy simply one of a dozen young professional women getting their day started.
Not recreating this montage is obviously not a flaw in and of itself, but it means the opening mirror-wipe was intentionally reduced to that single element. And that is part of a larger flaw with this sequel, because the entire first act is loaded to the rafters with references and callbacks to the original. It puts so many eggs in the nostalgia basket while doing the absolute bare minimum to set up the premise. Everything feels hasty and truncated like the movie resents the fact the original had such a clean break and it now has to suffer the indignity of coming up with some narrative device. The first act of The Devil Wears Prada 2 is not fun to watch.
Fortunately, the movie does realize what it actually has going for it, relatively quickly. All four leads from the original are back and all four of them are tremendously game to do this again. The charm of it all does find its swing fairly easily when moments are allowed to breathe. These characters have all remained true to who they were in the original, and their development since then feels authentic to who they are as people. The new additions to the cast, however, mostly don’t really add anything substantive to the proceedings and at worst operate as mere plot devices, like Lucy Liu’s Sasha Barnes.
Perhaps the best thing about the 20-year gap between movies is the fact that the sequel can play back into Andy Sachs being a new hire into Miranda Priestley’s operation. Meryl Streep doesn’t skip a beat in getting back into character and running her magazine the way she sees fit, with the expectations she’s always had. While Stanley Tucci as Nigel is quick to get right back up to speed with Andy in a more egalitarian relationship than his role as her mentor in the original, Miranda remains the ice queen she’s always been. It could feel like it’s more of the same, but Streep’s performance is as fun to watch as ever and the sequel being set in 2026 gives her a lot to work with comedically with the help of Amari (Simone Ashley), her current 1st assistant who among other things is responsible for correcting her language and her treatment of her employees to fit the 2020s zeitgeist.
Which brings us to what the movie actually wants to say; at the start of the movie, Andy Sachs is the award-winning journalist she’s always wanted to be, only to lose her job just before winning said award. At the same time, Runway Magazine has hit a PR crisis because of an apparent endorsement of a brand that employs sweatshops. In response, Andy is brought back into the fold to head up the Features department of Runway to reclaim the narrative and provide a strong voice to the magazine and attempt to salvage the magazine’s dwindling audience in the age of digital content production.
It’s a fitting angle for a movie about the publishing industry in 2026, and the movie certainly doesn’t shy away from the overall state of the entire digital landscape, introducing Justin Theroux as Benji Barnes, this universe’s version of the idiot billionaire tech bro. The way The Devil Wears Prada 2 layers its message into the movie isn’t necessarily much at the forefront, because first and foremost it still needs to be a The Devil Wears Prada sequel and focus on its main characters’ work within the fashion industry. All the same, I appreciated that it actually wanted to go for something in the background, even though the execution of that element flounders a little bit in the wake of hitting familiar beats like sequels do.
What it comes down to, for me, is that these characters are immediately familiar, and the actors haven’t lost a step whatsoever. For anyone who enjoyed the original, there should be more than enough to have a good time with the sequel, based purely on the charm of its cast and the quality of its costume design.
Rating: Liked It
The Devil Wears Prada 2 is currently playing in theaters
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