Be warned: An alternative headline for this review may well be “Movie not intended for reviewer did not fully satisfy reviewer.” I consider anything outside of graphic T-shirts to be “high fashion.” Thus, there was a smaller-than-infinitesimal chance that The Devil Wears Prada 2 was going to knock my socks-that-have-The-Muppets-on-them off. Please take the following with a grain of salt, but…
Although I may recognize Old Navy as a designer band, I have also seen a few movies. It feels like an objectively weird time to make one that is so emphatically in favor of conspicuous consumption and privilege. We are fully in our “eat the rich” era, as billionaire oligarchs play keep-away with our basic human necessities. Any flick that has a “look at the fancy lady having to fly coach” punchline is going to feel at least a little tone deaf.
To be fair, writer Aline Brosh McKenna does try to use a “journalism is important and good and being killed by wicked rich people” central storyline to give us a reason to root for some of the wealthy people dressing pretty. And yet, at the end of the day, the whole shebang still boils down to rallying around the importance of people celebrating outfits that would look at home in gold-plated ballrooms.
Andy (Anne Hathaway) is now a full-fledged Very Important Journalist who gets laid off literally at the same moment she wins a major award for her work. This coincides with Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep) getting in super-hot water because the prestigious magazine that she still helms, Runway, ran a glowing profile on what turned out to be a fast-fashion sweatshop. Aging media mogul Irv Ravitz (Tibor Feldman) gets convinced by his business-jargon-spewing son (B.J. Novak) to hire Andy on as a features editor at Runway in order to restore credibility.
Thus, Andy is reunited with her former mentor, Nigel (Stanley Tucci), and everyone is soon reunited with their former coworker Emily (Emily Blunt), who is now a bigwig at Dior. That is a fashion company. Just in case you were unaware. Emily is now dating billionaire Benji Barnes (Justin Theroux), whose divorce from Sasha Barnes (Lucy Liu) is a Very Big Deal. Andy lands the first interview with Sasha since the split, which means everything is going quite well.
Everything does not continue to go well.
The remainder of the plot is basically a bunch of “this could have been an email” sequences interrupted by Very Cool Fashion. I actually do not know if it was cool. I was told that some of it was. I will never know for sure.
What I do know for sure is that Streep still slays. Is that a shock at this point? Director David Frankel gives her enough space to do whatever she wants, as he should. Hathaway is meh, but it’s not her fault that they took away her character’s one defining element. In the first film, she was (somewhat) nerdy. Here, she’s quasi-confident. That means her defining characteristics are now “flirts with a man and makes phone calls.” Blunt is given more to do, but not much, and Tucci gives full “Tooch.” I guess it works? Maybe?
To someone who is style impaired, it just feels like a rom-com without the rom and not enough com or a dramedy about how some of the superficial wealthy white people are actually pretty cool, which I do not find cool.
I fully, completely do not “get” it, but that could very well be a “me” problem. Whatever this is, it’s not my style.
Grade = C-
Other Critical Voices to Consider
Rain Jokinen at MullingMovies.com says “While the story is filled with pretty clothes, fancy apartments, European landscapes, and beautiful people, ultimately, none of the characters stands on very steady ground, with careers and lifestyles that are not guaranteed. And that’s because of one ugly truth the film hammers home: billionaires are both the cause of, and potential solution to, all of life’s problems.”
Dana Stevens at Slate says “Ultimately, if you’re a big enough fan of the first Devil Wears Prada to have ever texted a friend (or in my case a daughter) that viral video of Bowen Yang flawlessly lip-synching the “cerulean” speech, this sparkly sequel provides a satisfying balance between nostalgic callbacks and intelligent updates to suit a more contemporary, if sadder, media landscape.”
Rachel Ho at Exclaim! says “Millennial-era legacy sequels are so hot right now. While reboots and remakes get a bad rep (deservedly so), some projects have offered a welcome antithesis — the latest season of Scrubs being my favourite example, and The Devil Wears Prada 2 as a close second.”