The Devil Wears Prada 2
Directed by David Frankel
Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway, Emily Blunt, Stanley Tucci
“Twenty years later, Andy is back, Miranda is back, and the print magazine industry that gave them all jobs is mostly not. The sequel works hardest when it stops pretending the world has not changed.”
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The Review
The Devil Wears Prada 2 had every reason to be cynical legacy sequel content. The original is beloved, the cast is iconic, and the algorithm rewards nostalgia harder than craft. The film mostly resists that gravity. David Frankel returns. Aline Brosh McKenna co-writes. Meryl Streep walks back into Miranda Priestly like she never left, which is the highest praise and the most concerning warning.
The premise is built around a media industry that does not exist anymore. Andy has aged into the kind of executive who explains to her boss what TikTok is. Miranda is running a luxury empire that includes a streaming arm, a fragrance line, and approximately one print magazine kept alive by sheer force of personality. Emily Blunt's Emily has the best material in the movie because she is the only one allowed to acknowledge that her career, like the magazine business, is held together with French manicures and spite.
Where it stumbles is the part where it tries to manufacture relevance. The Gen Z assistant subplot has the energy of a 60 year old writer doing extensive research. The streaming wars references date the script before it has finished playing. But Streep and Hathaway have enough on-screen capital to carry it through and Stanley Tucci is doing what Stanley Tucci does, which is single-handedly elevating any scene he is in. You will enjoy it. You will not need to see it twice.
What It Nails
- +Meryl Streep's return as Miranda Priestly is genuinely iconic and earns the ticket price
- +Stanley Tucci continues to be cinema's most reliable supporting performance
- +Emily Blunt gets the sharpest dialogue and runs with it
- +The wardrobe department deserves a separate awards campaign
- +Patricia Field's costume work for the legacy characters threads the needle perfectly
What It Botches
- -The Gen Z subplot reads like research done at arms length by people who do not know anyone under 35
- -Streaming wars references will age into incoherence by 2028
- -The pacing sags in the second act when the script tries to do too many themes at once
- -Anne Hathaway's Andy is written more as a status update than a character
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Who It's For
Anyone who quoted the original at their desk in 2007 and now has a corner office and a teenager. People who like seeing Meryl Streep work. Fashion industry adjacent professionals who want to feel seen.
Who Should Skip
Anyone hoping for a fundamental reinvention of the property. Skeptics of legacy sequels in general. Anyone who needs their movies to be about anything other than vibes and clothing.
Marketing Roast
The marketing is leaning entirely on Streep's face and the cerulean monologue meme. Both will sell tickets. Neither tells you what the movie is actually about because the movie is mostly about not telling you what it is about.
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