Fashion trends are notoriously fickle but some things, like Meryl Streep and Stanley Tucci, never go out of style.
So you can see why making “The Devil Wears Prada 2,” two decades after the original, was hard to resist. The cast, led by Anne Hathaway, have hardly aged. The then-little-known Emily Blunt has turned into a star. Throw in some stiletto heels and a few T.J. Maxx quips and the thing practically writes itself.
Yet time has worn on “The Devil Wears Prada 2,” a fitfully functional sequel that doesn’t fit its cast nearly as snugly as the 2006 original did. Nostalgia, haute couture and the sheer appeal of Streep and Tucci will be enough for some to celebrate this 20-year reunion. The actors all don their old roles seamlessly. But the trouble with “The Devil Wears Prada 2” isn’t its winning cast. It’s that everything else has changed. The sequel, which returns director David Frankel and screenwriter Aline Brosh McKenna, valiantly tries to catch up to the times, but the result is enough to make you wish they had said “That’s all” after the first one.
“The Devil Wears Prada,” Lauren Weisberger’s 2003 novel, was born out of an earlier media age when the New York magazine was a midtown dream of power, cachet and free-flowing expense reports. Weisberger, who had worked as a personal assistant to Vogue editor Anna Wintour, famously based her Runway magazine editor-in-chief Miranda Priestly (Streep) on her former boss.
But the sequel takes place in a very different media ecosystem. In the opening scenes of the new film, Andrea Sachs (Hathaway) receives an award for her investigative journalism for a newspaper called The Vanguard only to, moments before her speech, find out that she and her colleagues have been laid off. If Chanel-styled escapism is part of the promise of “The Devil Wears Prada,” reporters will likely find it soberly realistic. There is, for better and worse, an awful lot of Hathaway preaching about the power of journalism here.
Things at Runway aren’t much better, either. The magazine is more digital than glossy now; going viral matters more than shaping fashion trends. After the magazine unwittingly publishes a laudatory profile of a label soon after revealed to be a sweatshop, Runway chair Irv Ravitz (Tibor Feldman), in PR crisis mode, hires Andrea to run the features department.
So it takes quite a bit of narrative cross stitching to, 20 years later, make Miranda Andrea’s boss again. At their reunion, an overexcited Andy is met by a typically cool Miranda, who characteristically doesn’t even remember her. Their task of reviving the reputation of Runway gets significantly more difficult when Irv’s tech bro son (B.J. Novak) takes over ownership. Further corporate jeopardy follows when other players — including Blunt’s Emily Charlton, now a Dior executive, and her wealthy boyfriend, Benji Barnes (Justin Theroux) — join the mix.
The second “Devil Wears Prada” plays out a bit like a fashion world “Succession,” with better clothes and a lot less cursing. While these shifting power dynamics make for some dramatic reversals, they don’t get near the pure enjoyment of the novice assistant-tyrannical boss relationship that defined the original.
That might be the real rub of “The Devil Wears Prada 2”: Mid-life career changes aren’t nearly as compelling or relatable as a newbie assistant thrown into the high-fashion fire. All we really want is to see Meryl Streep say cutting things to Anne Hathaway, with a few zingers from a well-tailored Tucci on the side.
The sequel delivers a little of that, but it mostly tries to cover its narrative issues with trips to the Hamptons and Milan, and a long list of cameos, from Karl-Anthony Towns (go Knicks) to Kara Swisher. There’s also Kenneth Branagh as Miranda’s violin-playing husband, Lucy Liu as a sought-after interview and Patrick Brammall as an Aussie developer and Andrea’s love interest. (Pour one out for Adrian Grenier’s sous chef, who doesn’t return in the sequel.)
The first “The Devil Wears Prada” was about having career ambitions while not entirely sacrificing your personal life, too. In the sequel, the struggle is for maintaining a standard of quality, in journalism and taste, when those things are going increasingly out of fashion.
What else has gone by the wayside? The cruel boss. “The Devil Wears Prada” might have very well had Miranda, in the intervening years, be canceled and have to claw back her seat of power. Instead, she has two assistants. One, played by Simone Ashley, is a sharp-elbowed heir to Blunt’s character. The other, played by Caleb Hearon, is smiley and chipper. Andy has an assistant (Helen J. Shen) too, but they get along terrifically.
In the workplace, this would be called progress. On the screen, it’s a setback. Everyone, even Miranda, is a bit too, well, nice in “The Devil Wears Prada 2.” We should relish every Streep performance. It’s been five years since she had a major role in a movie; a once constant joy of moviegoing has turned infrequent. I wouldn’t begrudge anyone who just wants to see her and these actors together again. But the movie, well stocked in Prada, could have used a bit more of Streep’s unflappable devil.
“The Devil Wears Prada 2,” a 20th Century Studios release in theaters Thursday, is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association for strong language and some suggestive references. Running time: 119 minutes. Two stars out of four.
