The Devil Wears Prada 2 review: 'a movie whose time has come'

The Devil Wears Prada 2 (12A) ★★★

Twenty years is a long time to wait for a sequel, but The Devil Wears Prada 2 feels less like a desperate cash-grab than a movie whose time has weirdly come. Where the beloved 2006 original — based on Lauren Weisberger’s best-selling novel fictionalising her tenure as an assistant to Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour — broadly satirised the fashion industry and the openly toxic work environment that was routinely tolerated as a make-or-break test of character, the new film arrives in a world where the very real decline of the magazine industry’s gate-keeper status means Meryl Streep’s Miranda Priestly has been somewhat cowed.

Mercifully she’s still as imperious as ever so there’s fun to be had watching her respond to the implications of running a downsized online-only fashion magazine in an office environment where her assistants are now more like pre-emptive crisis management consultants. As the film opens, Miranda is already navigating a career-threatening PR disaster and, to mitigate the damage, her bosses at Runway (the film’s proxy for Vogue) have decided to hire an award-winning journalist to bring some prestige to the magazine. Re-enter Anne Hathaway’s Andy Sachs, who ended the first film jacking in Runway to pursue a nobler career as a reporter and begins this one as a veteran journalist indiscriminately fired by the tech conglomerate that’s hoovered up her publication.

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The film — once again directed by David Frankel and written by Aline Brosch McKenna — is pretty attuned to recent media trends and the dominance of tech bros who only care about metrics and profit inevitably becomes the focal point of everyone’s ire in this one. That also puts Miranda and Andy on equal footing. Though Miranda doesn’t remember Andy at first, they’re more allies than enemies this time out, which isn’t quite as funny to watch. Luckily Emily Blunt is. Returning as Miranda’s other former assistant, Emily Charlton, she’s consistently hilarious as a high-powered fashion exec who’s now able to turn the tables on Miranda.

The ensuing plot zips the action from New York to Milan and takes on a bit of a meta dimension as Andy secretly contemplates penning an exposé of Miranda, though in truth, the film can’t quite bring itself to follow through on the latter with any bite. Still it’s light and fun and Blunt really is a blast.

In cinemas from 1 May

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