Twenty years later, Miranda Priestly is still formidable. I’m less convinced about the story built around her.
I caught The Devil Wears Prada 2 recently on JioHotstar.
Maybe that was the right way to watch it.
No opening-weekend hype. No need to immediately decide whether a sequel arriving two decades later had justified its existence. Just the curiosity of meeting some very familiar characters again.
And, if I am being truthful, one character in particular.
I wanted Miranda Priestly back.
Not a softened Miranda. Not a more understanding Miranda shaped by two decades of changing workplace culture.
I wanted the intimidating, immaculately controlled Miranda who could ruin somebody’s day by barely changing her tone.
On that count, the movie delivers.
Miranda is still Miranda
Meryl Streep slips back into Miranda Priestly almost too easily.
The pauses still work. The looks still work. The voice still works.
Most importantly, Streep remembers what made Miranda such a terrific character in the first place: she never needs to demonstrate power. Everyone around her demonstrates it for her.
And yes, I rather enjoyed seeing badass Miranda again.
One of her sharper lines in the sequel is:
“You’re not a visionary. You’re a vendor.”
That is classic Miranda. No speech. No elaborate insult. Seven words and somebody’s self-esteem has left the building.
And, of course:
“That’s all.”
Some lines simply survive their movies.
The problem is that while Miranda appears completely effortless, the plot around her often feels exactly the opposite.
I could see the writers arranging the pieces
Twenty years have passed.
Andy Sachs is no longer the unsure young assistant entering a world she doesn’t understand. Emily has moved on. Nigel has his own journey. The fashion and publishing industries themselves have changed enormously.
There is actually a very good reason for a sequel to exist here.
Traditional magazines are no longer operating from the position of cultural dominance they enjoyed when the first movie came out. Audiences have fragmented. Advertising has shifted. Influence has moved elsewhere.
That could have been the movie.
Instead, I often felt the writers first decided they wanted Miranda, Andy, Emily and Nigel back in each other’s lives, and then worked backwards to create reasons for it.
Characters need to meet, so circumstances emerge.
Old tensions need to return, so situations are constructed to bring them back.
Andy needs to re-enter Miranda’s universe, so the screenplay finds a route to get her there.
None of it is impossible.
It just feels a bit forced.
And at times, contrived.
That was my biggest issue with the movie.
But nostalgia works
The funny thing is, I didn’t mind all that much while these characters were actually on screen.
There is genuine pleasure in seeing them again.
Anne Hathaway plays Andy as someone who has clearly lived a life since we last saw her. Stanley Tucci remains instantly watchable. And Emily Blunt gets some of the movie’s most enjoyable moments.
Emily probably gets the most quotable line too:
“May the bridges I burn light my way.”
Perfectly Emily.
The sequel also knows exactly how much affection audiences have for these characters.
Perhaps a little too well.
There are callbacks, familiar rhythms and scenes designed to make us think:
Ah, yes. I remember this.
And most of the time, it works.
I smiled.
But occasionally I became aware that I was smiling because the movie was reminding me of something I had already loved, rather than giving me something equally memorable now.
That is the danger with sequels like this.
The first movie had to make us care.
The second one already knows that we do.
The part I wanted more of
The most interesting aspect of The Devil Wears Prada 2 for me was not the relationships or the nostalgia.
It was the changing media business.
The original movie showed Runway as an institution at the height of its power. Miranda was formidable partly because Runway itself mattered enormously.
The sequel is set in a very different world.
And that raises a much more interesting question:
What happens to powerful people when the institutions that created their power start losing relevance?
That is where Miranda becomes fascinating again.
She may still dominate a room, but does the room itself matter as much as it once did?
For someone who has spent years around media and digital businesses, I found myself wanting the film to go much deeper into that tension.
Magazines once decided what mattered.
Now influence flows through creators, platforms, algorithms, communities and fragmented audiences.
So what does somebody like Miranda do when cultural gatekeeping itself is changing?
That, to me, was the sequel hiding inside the sequel.
I would happily have traded some of the manufactured plot complications for more of that.
So, did I like it?
Yes.
But with reservations.
It is stylish, funny and entertaining enough.
The cast still has chemistry. The fashion world remains fun to revisit. And whenever Meryl Streep appears, the movie immediately becomes more interesting.
The problem is that I could sometimes see the machinery underneath the story.
The original Devil Wears Prada felt like a strong story that happened to give us unforgettable characters.
This one occasionally feels like the filmmakers first decided to bring back unforgettable characters and then went looking for a story.
Fortunately, they remain very good company.
And Miranda Priestly?
Still intimidating.
Still funny.
Still able to make everyone around her look slightly nervous without appearing to do anything at all.
I enjoyed seeing her again.
I just wish the plot had relaxed a little and allowed her—and the changing world around her—to do more of the work.
My rating: 3.5/5
Good to see them again.
Very good to see her again.
That’s all.
