Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway and Emily Blunt are back to stick up for magazine journalism in a surprisingly thoughtful comedy sequel. Here’s our The Devil Wears Prada 2 review. Once upon a time, the studio behind a lucrative mid-budget comedy might send its cast abroad (or at least cross-state) for a sequel. It’s one of ... The Devil Wears Prada 2 review | Chanel boots and corporate brutes
Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway and Emily Blunt are back to stick up for magazine journalism in a surprisingly thoughtful comedy sequel. Here’s our The Devil Wears Prada 2 review.
Once upon a time, the studio behind a lucrative mid-budget comedy might send its cast abroad (or at least cross-state) for a sequel. It’s one of many things Bridget Jones: The Edge Of Reason, Sex And The City 2 and Night At The Museum: Battle For The Smithsonian have in common.
In 2026, as Disney’s 20th Century Studios revives Lauren Weisberger’s bestselling novel of cutthroat fashionistas and Stanley Tuccis, it doesn’t need to. The past, as they say, is a different country, and in the 20 years since The Devil Wears Prada, the worlds of magazine journalism and modern media have drifted apart like a misbehaving zip in a game of Twister.
The Devil Wears Prada 2 is all too aware the worlds of fashion journalism (and renting in New York) ain’t what they were. Yes, Andy (Anne Hathaway) has an electric toothbrush (in a knowing homage to the first film’s opening); but she’s also in her forties, living in a flat share with her old college friend, Lily (a returning Tracie Thoms), which has access to running water only when she hits the tap. We’ve come a long way from Sex And The City.
To make matters worse, her stable and journalistically rigorous job at fictional newspaper, the New York Vanguard, is under threat. As she declares in a slightly on-the-nose awards speech, her employer’s parent company is taking a $500m write down. Buh-bye, award-winning journalists!
Luckily for Andy, her tearful plea for the future of her industry goes viral enough to kick the plot into motion. It’s spotted by Runway chairman, Irv Ravitz (Tibor Feldman), who parachutes her back in to add integrity to the magazine’s features department following a spot of bother over a sweatshop endorsement. Together with the devilish Miranda (Meryl Streep), Nigel (Tucci) and Emily (Emily Blunt, having left Runway for Dior), the gang come back together to fight a new enemy: the death of print media.
That reunion, for an audience well-versed in the modern era of legacy sequels and tired franchise renewals, reeks a little of a stilted awards show presenting gig (or a particularly ambitious segment of Comic Relief). But force that cynical nausea back with a ginger tea and hands off the Ozempic; what opens with all the hallmarks of a studio cash grab does a pretty good job of justifying its existence in the 2020s.
Returning screenwriter Aline Brosh McKenna avoids overwhelming the script with too many obvious nods to cancel culture and TikTok. That’s all surface dressing. Miranda – never really the villain of the first movie, fight me – has in the last 20 years transformed from “devil” into girlboss into a sort of larger-than-life icon. The film recognises that um, actually-ing the character’s toxic behaviour for two hours would bore us to tears. Instead, for all her hilariously unreasonable demands, The Devil Wears Prada 2 celebrates the pursuit of excellence in a culture mining mediocrity for cash.
This is Miranda’s story; but if she’s the protagonist, the real villain must have us quaking in our Chanel boots.
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Enter a revolving door of suited management consultants and new media CEOs, played alternately by B.J. Novak, Justin Theroux and unnamed goons with big smiles and titles groaning with abstract nouns. As the forces around Miranda conspire to turn Runway into a 21st century slop machine, can the old guard stand together to stop them?
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The power dynamics of the first movie have been turned on their head. Miranda is no longer the fashion industry’s tastemaker-in-chief – or rather, power is held by people without taste. She’s a dinosaur in every sense: impressive, yes, but hard to imagine functioning in late-stage capitalism. Hosted by the twin high achievers of the fashion and journalism industries, the glamour of a red carpet – funky hats, flashy photography and catwalk pop – starts to look like a glass diamond. Priestly’s world is just as extravagant as it always was, but it, like her, has lost some of its under-the-skin swagger.
And while journalists will undoubtedly get a lot from a blockbuster explicitly putting its head above the parapet for them, this is a very 2026 story any way you look at it. For anyone watching their backs for corporate sharks and AI, it might not just bring the kind of escapism you were hoping for from the funny fashion movie. As Miranda sits in meetings nodding along to jargon she can’t possibly understand, she’ll join millions of others caught between the unknowable lingo of business bollocks and TikTok. “The future is like the lava of Pompeii”, one character says. “Our job is to let it take what it takes.”
The resultant film is less acidic than its predecessor but, behind the judgemental glares and celeb cameos, much angrier. The Devil Wears Prada 2 is a smart, funny comedy which asks why we’ve built a world in which smart people can’t build nice things. That it had to resurrect a 20-year-old franchise to do so is an irony Miranda Priestly would be proud of.
