RIOTUS

After twenty years, 20^th Century Studios has finally released their sequel to the beloved fashion comedy drama The Devil Wears Prada with the plainly titled The Devil Wears Prada 2. Returning to direct is David Frankel, and also returning is screenwriter Aline Brosh McKenna. Of course, our favs are back with Meryl Streep as the Anna Wintour-inspired Miranda Priestly, Anne Hathaway as the everywoman Andy Sachs, Emily Blunt as uber posh Emily Charlton, and Stanley Tucci as Miranda’s underappreciated right-hand man and Andy’s fairy godfather Nigel Kipling. With such a long break in between the films, the world of fashion and journalism has changed greatly. Does it hold up to the standards set by the first film? I think it does and, in some ways, is better.

So the setup is this: Andy has become an accomplished journalist working for newsrooms across the world and is back in New York. After getting let go from her paper because of the changing dynamics of the business, she ends up being brought back into Runway as Features Editor by the owners of the magazine to bring some legitimacy to the publication after a reporting scandal. Andy now has to navigate returning to the Runway and working for Miranda, as the business of fashion coverage has shifted. She wants to become the Chief Content Officer of the whole media corporation.

The new film feels comfortable as soon as it begins. It starts right into the action with no real exposition or trying to introduce the world, which I found refreshing. The filmmakers know this is foremost for people who enjoyed the first film—having the film instead of trying to explain the world of high fashion, being a fish out of water, and working well in the Anne Hathaway image of coming of age and becoming beautiful, which she’s done previously. With this one, it at first feels like a film where a woman returns home after becoming herself in the world, and while that’s there, what I connected to is just how much this film made a fulfilling story for these characters with growth that ties into the world we are in now – billionaires, finance destroying industries, video killing writing, and so much more.

It interests me much like how seeing a superhero movie or watching The Super Mario Galaxy Movie did, seeing those connections to established canon or previously told stories, and seeing Andy deal with the hollowing out of journalism because it doesn’t make money. Seeing all the things she values and worked for disappear breaks her heart on screen, and it is a subject easy to connect to and empathize with. Her having to go back to Runway, where she now has fond memories of, yet at the end had to leave because of what she valued more than the world of fashion, is an interesting character conflict. While she no longer looks down on what Runway does as she did twenty years ago, it is still not something she finds as serious as the work she was doing. She needs Runway to help save what she values, as it still has access to capital. That capital is what is in danger in ways that only Miranda knows. Miranda, through her almost divinely regal tone, is still the only one who sees what Andy can’t see.

Yet here, with having a film that has Miranda in some ways on her back foot this time, gives Andy a way to show Miranda things she might’ve missed or disregarded in her past. Through this, you can see they both have grown and become more human than what we saw in the first film. Hathaway’s performance of the now wiser and yet still positively eager writer has a nice warmth. She’s still the audience’s stand-in, but here she’s changed too much into how the film has aged; she wants and needs to protect Runway and Miranda from the greater world, yet still has some epiphanies of the nature of the industry that she loves.

In terms of acting, our four main characters are either Academy Award-nominated or winners here. So the acting here is great with the right amount of sincerity in drama and comedy to pull off any scene they are in. The more they are in scenes, the better together. Streep really owns this character and makes it more of her own. While the character is still a fictional version of Anna Wintour and much of her arc and plot owes a lot to the real-life professional events of Wintour’s life, it’s still its own thing. To the point where I feel I think Wintour might be better served by this Purple Rain-like version of herself than anyone actually trying to play her. Streep’s expressiveness and matronly tone of sarcasm and exhaustion of dealing with this modern world, or people just being up to her standard. Streep enjoys Miranda, and you can feel it coming off the screen.

Emily Blunt slides back into Emily with ease. Her cutting remarks are only one-upped by Streep’s, but she has the most interesting and the saddest outcome of all the characters. In some way, she’s like a bad guy in a cartoon where she ends up outsmarted, but in the end, it’s all okay. Blunt’s performance has some very good small details and wonderful microexpressions throughout. Tucci also feels right at home here, but with increased notoriety in exploring culture, the film does get to play a bit with Tucci’s own persona within Nigel’s. It’s something I very much enjoyed. Tracie Thoms gets to return as Andy’s best friend, Lily, the only returning friend from the old movie, while Andy gets all new journalist friends who are way better friends and characters. Lily gets to do more and be more than just liking an expensive bag and then chastising Andy for getting more glam.

Kenneth Branagh was a welcome surprise as Stuart, Miranda’s current husband, where again we get to see more of the softer side of her. Again, the level of actors here is top-level. Branagh and Streep are just doing nice little soft romantic bits. Good stuff. The weakest part of the film is Patrick Brammall as Peter, Andy’s love interest, who is just nice. Not a bad performance, just not enough to do. Simone Ashley plays Miranda’s new number one assistant, Amari Mari, who looks amazing every damn time she’s on screen. The whole costuming team, hair, and makeup team must love her down because I swear every damn time she’s stunning and is the perfect modern assistant you’d imagine for Miranda.

I liked Helen J. Shen as Jin Chao, Andy’s assistant, who is very much like Andy in the first film in terms of background, and adds a nice dynamic to see how Andy does with being a manager rather than just having a similar role of just working for Miranda. She gets to make decisions and have people to look out for. I’ve seen some controversy for Jin Chao online, even though I don’t know how real it is. I think people need to see the character in the film versus just the little bit in the trailers. The film, unlike the first one, is completely littered with fashion industry and celebrity cameos. It feels more placed in the world than the first one in that regard, as Vogue and Conde Nast have embraced Disney’s current sequel. I think there is something even meta within that, in regard to the film and its ending, that I haven’t completely figured out yet.

After all these words, all to say this is a sequel that does right by its first film. While for some, the overall nostalgia and the way the world was back then might keep it as the better film. While this one works from that film and might not work without seeing it, I actually like this one more and think it’s one of the rare times the sequel is better. I’ve watched the original film a lot, as it felt like one of the few times like being in art school in NYC for me, especially in terms of the commercial arts. The Devil Wears Prada 2 expands the world and explores more themes better over time. It knew how to improve on all the characters and issues the first film had that you could see over time, while not disparaging it. All the stars and people involved made a great fashion event right in time for the Met Gala, so that Fashionistas get their own Endgame too.