Maybe it's inevitable that what began as a story about the horrors of working for a magazine has morphed into a story about the horrors of not working for a magazine. Be careful what you wish for and all that.
The Devil Wears Prada began as a 2003 novel by Lauren Weisberger, who had been an assistant to mega-famous Vogue editor Anna Wintour. It was the story of a young woman named Andrea (who goes by Andy) who becomes an assistant to the (fictional) mega-famous Runway editor Miranda Priestly. In the end, Andy flees Miranda's employ, realizing she does not want to ever become as ruthless and unloved as her boss, who never shows her or anyone else an ounce of kindness.
The hit 2006 film adapted from the book made a lot of changes, but one was most important: It offered the soft redemption of Miranda, who was played by Meryl Streep. While the movie's Miranda is still nasty, brutish and short with assistants, she cries over being left by her husband, chuckles affectionately to herself after she sees Andy on the street long after their parting, and — most important — helps Andy, played by Anne Hathaway, land a job at a newspaper after she walks out on Runway.
Underneath it all, the movie whispers, she's not so bad.
In The Devil Wears Prada 2, this softening becomes an outright face turn, because the story is no longer about Miranda's treatment of others; it's about everybody getting together to save journalism. As the tale begins, Andy is an award-winning investigative reporter, but when she's abruptly laid off via text, she needs a job. And Elias-Clarke, the publishing conglomerate that owns the now digital-first Runway, needs help, too, following a PR disaster. Hoping for a gloss of respectability, Elias-Clarke boss Irv Ravitz brings in Andy, who's now gone viral for a full-throated public defense of real journalism, to lead the Runway features department. And while she never saw herself working for Miranda again, Andy needs a job.
Before long, though, Irv's son (B.J. Novak) is in charge, and he wants to run the usual playbook of layoffs and cutbacks. It will be the destruction of Runway as Miranda's iron fist has ruled it and as Andy, for whatever reason, still cherishes it. These events also bring Andy back to her one real Runway mentor, Nigel (Stanley Tucci), who is still Miranda's number two, as well as her frenemy Emily (Emily Blunt), who was once Miranda's other assistant, and who now works at Dior. As Emily explains, retail is the only part of luxury fashion that still makes money.
The Devil Wears Prada 2 was always going to feel different from its predecessor. It would be impossible to make a 2026-set fable about a plucky person who finds herself in the lush and carefree world of glossy print magazines. Not unless you set it on a fictional planet, anyway, because no such environment has appeared to exist on Earth in many years. The story they tell here, about a group effort to save the day, feels timely in some ways, but deeply unconvincing in others.
On the one hand, the most resonant emotional moments in the film involve Miranda's genuine grief at the potential loss of her position. She sees the devaluing of her own work, of everything she's built, and even of the beauty and artistry she truly believes she tried to champion. Despite their differences, Andy can relate to all this, because she also lost a job she loved and was committed to at the hands of corporate overlords, so they're in the same boat.
But on the other hand: Are they? Really? Miranda will still have her extraordinary wealth and her many A-list friends, no matter what happens to Runway. Because Meryl Streep is Meryl Streep, she sells the story about Miranda's interiority — her identity. The thing is ... Miranda takes private cars everywhere. She grabs a helicopter when she's in a hurry. The crisis in media jobs does affect people's sense of self and sense of purpose, but a woman who was abusive to staff for many years and nevertheless reigned long enough to become outrageously rich and powerful is a strange representative for laid-off journalists. The personal grief is real, but so is not knowing where you're going to get medical insurance or the money to pay your rent, which are not problems this woman is going to have. That's on top of the fact that a lot of media organizations have morale problems, too, and one of the things Miranda built in her career is workplace trauma in other people. (The film touches on that fact very, very lightly, but then backs away from it.)
Miranda's full redemption is one of a few ways in which this story positions a better class of nicer, kinder zillionaires as a potential answer to the woes of the media industry and its workers. And that is going to be a tough sell if you give the idea much thought.
Of course, they don't necessarily mean for you to do that. This is a reunion of a bunch of very good actors who know these characters well, though Streep's take on Miranda has changed; it's more broadly comic and less icy, to the point where it's hard to believe people would ever have thought she was all that intimidating. There are montages of people in pretty clothes, there are a couple of reveals of fun cameos, and there are plenty of "oh, I recognize that sweater" nostalgia drops. If there's room for as many bleak and cynical movies that don't make a whole lot of sense as we've seen in recent months and years, then perhaps there's room for great-looking feel-good stories that entertain, even if they do seem a little like commercials for the Society Of The Good Kind Of Very Rich People.
There's a tremendous amount going on in this film that we haven't even talked about: a rushed romance between Andy and a contractor played by Patrick Brammall of Colin From Accounts (which the movie doesn't need); two new assistants played by Simone Ashley and Caleb Hearon (who don't get a lot to do); the welcome return of Tracie Thoms as Andy's bestie; the abbreviated effort to resolve the matter of Miranda's treatment of Nigel; the weirdo billionaire played by Justin Theroux (stuffing every molecule of scenery directly into his mouth); a small but nicely done turn by Kenneth Branagh as Miranda's current husband.
It's a lot. And some of it is fun. But "your mean and powerful overlord who made everybody miserable is on your side now, and hey, it turns out she's a lot like you" is a tough pill to swallow, even washed down with this much fizzy champagne.
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