Review: 'The Devil Wears Prada 2' gets the gang back together for fashion and fun, with Anne Hathaway and Meryl Streep connecting over the struggles of today's journalism
It may seem odd that a bubbly comedy like “The Devil Wears Prada 2” — a continuation of the Anne Hathaway / Meryl Streep fashion magazine franchise launched 20 years ago — would come out of the gate on the first movie weekend of May, traditionally the start of the summer movie season.
Isn’t the first weekend in May the time for action movies, science fiction and fantasy, you may ask. Then you look at what happens in “The Devil Wears Prada 2” and see that it’s very much a fantasy — of the wish-fulfillment variety.
When we reunite with Hathaway’s Andy Sachs, she’s left behind the world of Runway magazine, where she had a memorable internship under the impossible-to-please Miranda Priestly (Streep’s character) 20 years earlier. Andy, we’re told has had a stellar career as a journalist, covering important stories all over the world, most recently for a New York newspaper.
Then, at the very moment she’s about to receive a prestigious award, her phone buzzes — along with the phones of all of her colleagues at the table. They’ve all been laid off, via text. Andy gives an acceptance speech that becomes a viral moment, as she laments the state of American journalism.
Meanwhile, back at Runway, Miranda is dealing with a different journalistic problem. A poorly vetted puff piece about a fast-fashion brand has blown up in her face, with the internet abuzz about the sweatshop conditions that Runway failed to report. Miranda, who has seen her extravagant budgets and print edition pages both slashed as she’s transitioned to digital content, has her back against the wall.
The owner of the magazine conglomerate, Ira Ravitz (Tibor Feldman), decides to give Runway a credibility boost by hiring Andy as its new features editor. That Irv does this without telling Miranda first just heightens the tension when she encounters Andy again. Andy tries to assign some solid news stories, but finds getting online readers to click on the articles is a bigger challenge than she thought.
Meanwhile, Miranda has to make deals with advertisers, which is how Andy again meets up with Emily Charlton (Emily Blunt), Miranda’s former assistant and now an executive at Dior. Rounding out the reunions, Andy also connects with Runway’s long-suffering design director, Nigel Kipling (Stanley Tucci), still feeling the sting of Miranda’s lack of appreciation for his myriad talents.
It’s fascinating to watch director David Frankel and screenwriter Aline Brosh McKenna, both back from the first movie, use the real-life problems of today’s journalism — capricious ownership, corporate bean-counting, sacrificing credibility for clickbait — in a setting where ostentatious wealth and sequined glamour are the norm. It’s even stranger to let audiences, who likely fretted about the amount of gas it took to get to the theater, consider the choice of which billionaire to root for: Irv, Emily’s tech bro boyfriend (Justin Theroux) or the tech bro’s ex-wife (Lucy Liu).
There’s a fair amount of wit in the script, with Tucci’s Nigel again getting many of the best lines as he continues to school the surprisingly sunny Andy in both fashion and appeasing Miranda. (As a jaded old journalist, I question how enthusiastic and spunky Andy seems to be after two decades as a reporter.)
But the real fun – aside from picking out the many cameo appearances and luxuriating in the playgrounds of the extremely rich — is watching Hathaway and Streep back together to spar again as the imperious Miranda and the optimistic Andy. Hathaway seems to up her game in her scenes with Streep, and Streep seems to enjoy working to turn this impossibly arrogant character into something human. Their chemistry gives “The Devil Wears Prada 2” the fizzy energy it needs.
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‘The Devil Wears Prada 2
★★★
Opens Friday, May 1, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG-13 for strong language and some suggestive references. Running time: 119 minutes.