The devil still wears Prada in The Devil Wears Prada 2 (now on VOD platforms like Prime Video), but now she has to fly coach while carrying Coach. It’s 2026, 20 years after Anne Hathaway, Meryl Streep, Emily Blunt, and Stanley Tucci played fashion-magazine hoitie-toities in the preceding big-hit fish-out-of-water comedy — and that means fashion magazines now produce “content” for internet platforms and are subject to the whims of billionaires who only give a toot about the bottom line. So maybe this sequel is a smidgen more serious, but that didn’t matter for audiences, who made it a $685 million international box office smash. Whether that seriousness dampens the highly anticipated reunion of that cast, with director David Frankel and writer Aline Brosh McKenna, is the question.
The Gist: If you think it’s far-fetched that a newspaper firing a reporter via text three heartbeats before she wins an award for her reporting, well, you might be right. But it’s not too far off, and the core of the matter is upsettingly true: it’s hard out there for a journalist. Andy Sachs’ (Hathaway) acceptance speech turns into a rant about the callousness of her and a bevy of her coworkers’ firing and the vital importance of her profession. No argument there. The fourth estate, and all that. I will grind an ax at Andy’s lack of desperation in the wake of losing her job; her bestie Lily (Tracie Thoms), who runs an art gallery, offers Andy a position and instead of glomming onto it like any normal person with a sense of self-preservation, she turns it down, confident that The Plot will get her out of this jam.
And wouldn’t you know it. Runway magazine is in the public-opinion shitter after EIC Miranda Priestly (Streep) got a little too friendly with a corp that runs sweatshops. Publisher/owner Irv (Tibor Feldman) sees Andy’s viral rant and doubles her paltry newspaper salary as Runway’s new features editor. That’s news to Miranda and her eternal assistant editor Nigel Kipling (Tucci), but what the big boss says, goes. Nigel is still a pal to Andy, but Miranda sniffs and pretends she doesn’t remember psychologically abusing her former lickspittle personal assistant from two decades previous. Then she immediately recruits her to help smooth things over with one of their major advertisers. Namely, Dior, which is now run by Miranda’s other former underling, Emily Charlton (Blunt), who’s still flinty in a somewhat forgivable way, especially compared to Miranda’s ugly, awful way. Reunion complete. Avengers assemble!
Andy successfully launders Runway’s reputation with a we-effed-up-and-we’re-sorry column, making room for about 15-to-20 more plots. She lands a big interview with an elusive industry icon, Sasha Barnes (Lucy Liu). She contemplates a book deal for a behind-the-scenes Miranda Priestly expose. She does good, credible reporting for Runway and for some reason still yearns for Miranda’s recognition and approval, but, even in these high-tech times, blood still cannot be squeezed from stones. She begins dating a contractor, Peter (Patrick Brammall), who hooks her up with a swank apartment. Just as Miranda is about to get a fat promotion, Irv drops dead and his moron son (B.J. Novak) hires — shudder — management consultants, who make cuts forcing Miranda to mingle with civilians on airplanes and take Ubers. Meanwhile, Emily begins dating Sasha’s moron billionaire ex (Justin Theroux), which I only mention because you probably should know that Justin Theroux is kinda funny in this movie. Oh, and the movie asks us to sympathize with Miranda, who remains a secretly depressed horrible person. I wonder if those two things have anything to do with each other.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of? Credit TDWP2 for trying to bridge the gap between Breakfast at Tiffany’s and Spotlight, even if it nearly pulls a groin in the attempt.
Performance Worth Watching: Streep and Tucci are savvy old pros, as ever, although what they’re doing here is feeding us leftovers, but at least they reheat in the air fryer reasonably well. That leaves Blunt being as charismatic as ever (reprising the role that made her career), but having not quite enough to do, and Hathaway ably connecting all the plots and characters like a hall monitor making sure the kids stay in line during a field trip. These are all good performances, although none of them is a scene-stealer.
Sex And Skin: None.
Our Take: Full disclosure: The fact that I once had a boss who told me to “shut the fuck up” during a discussion about my potential promotion means it’s a pretty big ask for me to feel bad for a tyrant like Miranda Priestly (just because I got the promotion doesn’t make the guy any less of an asshole). To each their hangup, I guess. Does she deserve some sort of complex character arc? Sure. People contain multitudes, and all that, and we should believe in things like redemption and positive change, but a key component of The Devil Wears Prada 2 hinges on Andy and her jackass boss aligning against corporate cretins. It’s a compromise on Andy’s part that’s a bit hard to swallow, and at one point she brushes off Miranda being labeled “atrocious” by saying, “It’s more complicated than that.” Then nobody bothers to really address those complications in a meaningful way.
Ironically, one of those complications is where the movie finds its relevance and agency. It wisely recognizes that the world has changed since The Devil Wears Prada presented its entertainingly shallow conflicts between elites and normies. But it hasn’t changed so much that a fashion publication that now has to grub for attention by making TikToks and the like would EVER exist without luxe, airy office space, and personal chauffeurs. At least the screenplay finds antagonists to illustrate how those with more power and money than Miranda are even more callous than she is, and underscore how credible and realistic their actions are. In this sense, the film is “about” the all-too-real existential struggles of modern journalism, as long as you stretch the idea of modern journalism to include absurd expense accounts.
So I recommend keying on Andy, who endures these struggles, and whose relentless go-getter optimism results in karmic rewards including an unemployment stint that lasts for half the length of a hummingbird hiccup, a thick salary, couture freebies, an offer for a six-figure book deal, a safety-net backup job via a lifelong friend, a spacious New York City apartment that no journalist could ever afford, and an easy-on-the-eyes love interest (although that’s not so great – the character’s a dud and so’s this subplot). Poor Andy. I weep for her over my $837 monthly health insurance premium.
Okay, maybe we shouldn’t key on Andy too hard. She’s as likable a character as ever, and Hathaway’s interactions with her fellow high-talent cast mates range from buoyantly entertaining to lightly poignant. The many, many fans of the OG TDWP will find much to enjoy here, notching plentiful callbacks to the first film, the manner in which some of the characters have and haven’t changed, and the small avalanche of celeb cameos. The screenplay definitely tries to do too much — Caleb Hearon, Helen J. Shen, and Simon Ashley are mixed in as throwaway Runway office assistants, further cluttering the film even as they provide some color — but does so in a rather amiable manner. You may wish we got to witness Andy’s progression as a human instead of her just showing up at Runway to showcase her professional relevance. She’s pretty much the same person at the end of the movie as she is at the beginning, but she also gets a chance to shake hands with her devil in a new, fairly compelling way, and that’s enough to power this sequel out of mediocrity.
Our Call: Gently diminishing comedic returns and some thematic relevance make The Devil Wears Prada 2 more winner than loser. STREAM IT.
John Serba is a freelance film critic from Grand Rapids, Michigan. Werner Herzog hugged him once.