The Devil Wears Prada 2: Still wickedly fun

The Devil Wears Prada 2 (2026) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five); rated PG-13, for sensuality

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang 

The delicious snark isn’t quite as evident, and a greater degree of sentimentality is present, but everything else about this long-awaited sequel is spot-on.

 

When a panicked Andy (Anne Hathaway) confesses that she has nothing appropriate
to wear for a weekend gathering at her boss' home in the Hamptons, Nigel (Stanley
Tucci) comes to her rescue.

No surprise, since the entire team returned: director David Frankel, screenwriter Aline Brosh McKenna, and stars Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway, Emily Blunt and Stanley Tucci. It should be noted, however, that while the 2006 film was a reasonably faithful adaptation of Lauren Weisberger’s 2003 novel, this sequel is an entirely original story that is — as the screen credit reads — “based upon characters created by Weisberger.”

This actually is a good thing, since it allows McKenna to lace her character-driven plot with thoughtful — and rather unsettling — issues that are relevant here and now (although fans who enjoyed Weisberger’s two subsequent novels might be disappointed).

 

The story audaciously opens on twin crises.

 

Andy Sachs (Hathaway), having followed through with her long-ago decision to leave Runway magazine in order to become a professional reporter, receives a prestigious journalism award for a particularly hard-hitting series of articles. Alas, seconds before her name is announced as the winner, Andy and all of her key New York Vanguard colleagues — everybody sitting at the same table — are fired. By text. Victims of “corporate restructuring.”

 

Over at Runway, imperious editor-in-chief Miranda Priestly (Streep) faces a catastrophe, having failed to properly research an article about a clothing brand that has been revealed to rely on sweatshop labor. Advertisers begin to panic, and social media lights up with outrage and demeaning memes; Irv Ravitz (Tibor Feldman), owner of Runway’s parent company Elias-Clarke, is apoplectic.

 

Perhaps worse, Miranda cannot respond with the level of blistering waspishness that characterized her every interaction in the first film; a long series of HR complaints have left her verbally muzzled, forced to pivot to insufferable PC alternatives. One of the film’s funniest running gags involves Streep’s exasperated expression every time Miranda’s current assistant, Amari (Simone Ashley), quietly tut-tuts and forestalls an impending gaffe.

 

Seeking to hasten damage control, and made aware of Andy’s recent award, Irv figures she’d be the one to write an appropriately balanced and sincere mea culpa. He offers her a position as Runway’s features editor; astonished at this miraculous turn of events, she accepts.