The best part of the original 2006 dark comedy The Devil Wears Prada, for me, was the opening title sequence. Snappily edited to KT Tunstall’s “Suddenly I See,” it intercuts impossibly stylish supermodel-type young women beginning their day in New York in contrast to our supposedly frumpy heroine, Andy (Anne Hathaway), as she heads to a job interview.
The second-best part was the entrance that director David Frankel gave to the presumable title character, fashion magazine editor Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep). Since both sequences occur in the opening minutes of the movie, I’ve watched them many times on TV, without bothering to re-watch the rest. But Devil Wears Prada certainly has devoted fans, and now, two decades later, they’re being treated to a sequel.
Even though the opening titles aren’t nearly as energetic, I think The Devil Wears Prada 2 is better, overall, than the original. The glamorous big four in the original cast – Streep, Hathaway, Stanley Tucci and Emily Blunt – have all returned, as have Frankel, screenwriter Aline Brosh McKenna and cinematographer Florian Ballhaus, and are all in fine form. There’s a ton of fan service; many montages of Hathaway and Streep striding purposefully through Milan to thumping club music in one fabulous outfit after another, and they shouldn’t disappoint.
But this sequel has a real subject – the death of print. Based on a novel by Lauren Weisberger, the first film, you’ll recall, had Hathaway’s Andy taking an internship at Runway (based on Vogue) under Streep’s viciously snarky and dismissive editor Miranda (based on Vogue‘s Anna Wintour). Prada 2 starts with Andy, now an experienced, award-winning journalist, unceremoniously losing her job, then accepting a highly-paid offer to be features editor back at Runway.
Miranda greets Andy’s return with a mixture of indifference and horror; Miranda’s faithful sidekick Nigel (Tucci) greets Andy with dry sardonic wit masking avuncular warmth. Emily (Blunt), Miranda’s tightly-wound assistant in the original and now a bigshot with Dior, also re-enters the story. Intrigues follow, and the joke, as before, is that the decent, well-meaning Andy is always two steps behind everybody else’s maneuverings. But McKenna’s dialogue somehow seems meatier this time, and the plot stakes are higher than the question of whether Andy will turn into a soulless fashionista.
The trouble here, as in the original, is that the Miranda really is sort of the devil. Andy struggles to win her approval, and the move seems to imply that Miranda is a legitimate role model, but she just seems like a sociopath. At one point she says to Andy “I love to work!” as if cruelly insulting and belittling her underlings was somehow necessary for her to do her job well.
Streep is so dynamic and funny that the performance is still entertaining and even emotionally textured, and the grudging allowances to appropriate workplace behavior that Miranda must make in the current climate are sort of amusing. Besides, Miranda’s victims are eagerly willing, so I suppose her abuse is relatively harmless. But it’s nothing to admire.
Along with some surprise cameos playing themselves, a few name actors are added to Devil Wears Prada 2, including Justin Theroux and B. J. Novak as rich clods, Patrick Brammall as a half-hearted love interest for Andy, and Lucy Liu as a “holy grail” interview subject. Kenneth Branagh also turns up as Miranda’s new boyfriend (or husband?). He’s presented as a sweet, patient, unassuming guy, so I kept waiting for a twist to his character, but unless they’re saving it for another sequel, he’s just a nice guy with no obvious agenda. Maybe Branagh just wanted to share a couple of scenes with Streep. In any case, it’s quite refreshing.
