Rating: Four stars
The fashion industry celebrates some significant anniversaries this year. It’s a century since Coco Chanel unveiled her ‘little black dress’ in American Vogue, boldly challenging the notion that black was suitable only for servants or funerals. And it is two decades since the release of The Devil Wears Prada.
David Frankel’s 2006 film – based on the bestselling novel by Lauren Weisberger, which in turn was inspired by her time as assistant to Vogue’s notoriously formidable editor-in-chief Anna Wintour – gave us all a hugely entertaining peek into the catty, indeed cat-eat-cat, world of fashion. Eventually even Wintour raised a bony thumb of approval. The movie was a colossal hit, opening in the same week as Superman Returns and making him sorry he had. It knocked him out of the park.
So, this eagerly awaited sequel, with the same director-writer combination in Frankel and Aline Brosh McKenna, has expensive Jimmy Choos to fill. Happily it steps into them pretty stylishly, with the original quartet returning and doing as fine a job as you might expect of Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway, Stanley Tucci and Emily Blunt.
Anne Hathaway, (left) steals the show in the eagerly-anticipated Devil Wears Prada 2 movie as ice queen Miranda, (centre) is forced to give up her diva antics
The original quartet returns and does as fine a job as you might expect of Meryl Streep, Anne, Stanley Tucci, (right) and Emily Blunt
Daily Mail’s Brian Viner says Emily, (pictured) is a hoot, although we don’t see enough of her in this film
In truth it isn’t quite as enjoyable as the first film, because the satire doesn’t bite as hard. That’s maybe because its target is not so much fashion as journalism and publishing. Heaven knows, those domains aren’t exactly immune from mickey-taking either, but the mockery doesn’t flow as easily.
Nonetheless, The Devil Wears Prada 2 is smart and funny, and there are plenty of satisfying one-liners indicating how the world has changed in 20 years. I laughed aloud at one of them, when a disaffected books editor complains about her latest project ‘editing a memoir by one of Paris Hilton’s chihuahuas’. With most major publishing houses these days pitifully prostrating themselves before the god of celebrity, there’s a commission that could definitely happen.
As Streep herself noted at last week’s London premiere, the first film came out a year before the iPhone. This time, there are wry references to the weight-loss drug Ozempic, Uber and AI. Someone talks about ‘metrics’. And of course everyone wields a smartphone.
The story, too, has moved on. Miranda Priestly (Streep) has an amiable new husband played by Kenneth Branagh, but she remains as frostily imperious as ever, still ruling the roost at the influential Runway magazine with Nigel Kipling (Tucci) as her devotedly loyal right-hand man.
The Devil Wears Prada 2 is smart and funny, and there are plenty of satisfying one-liners indicating how the world has changed in 20 years
Runway resources are not what they were 20 years ago (we see Miranda ‘exhausted after hanging up her own coat’ and that several storylines finally collide during Milan Fashion Week
As so dispiritingly often with sequels, this film takes longer to tell its story than the first one did. But it still presents very appealingly
Donatella Versace and Naomi Campbell pop up among numerous blink-and-you’ll-miss-‘em cameos. A trifle less predictably, so does the golfer Rory McIlroy, (pictured). Lady Gaga at least gets a speaking role
The Devil Wears Prada 2 is in cinemas on Thursday
Meanwhile, snooty Emily Charlton (Blunt) has married, divorced, and joined Dior, while Andy Sachs (Hathaway), an editorial minion in 2006, is now an experienced, highly-decorated journalist. When she and her colleagues are all unexpectedly fired, by text, it isn’t long before another job falls into her lap … as features editor back at Runway.
Yet Miranda had nothing to do with the appointment, so Andy once again finds herself on the receiving end of the fabled editor’s Olympian hauteur. Now, though, she has an opportunity to capitalise, with a discreet offer to reveal Miranda’s foibles and excesses in an unauthorised biography. And soon there is more chicanery afoot, as a character plainly based on the Amazon tycoon Jeff Bezos (amusingly played by Justin Theroux) plots to add Runway to his media empire.
To give away too much more would be to sashay into spoiler territory. Yet I can reveal that Runway resources are not what they were 20 years ago (we see Miranda ‘exhausted after hanging up her own coat’) and that several storylines finally collide during Milan Fashion Week. Also, Donatella Versace and Naomi Campbell pop up among numerous blink-and-you’ll-miss-‘em cameos. A trifle less predictably, so does the golfer Rory McIlroy. Lady Gaga at least gets a speaking role.
As so dispiritingly often with sequels, this film takes longer to tell its story than the first one did. But it still presents very appealingly, with the majestic Streep slipping back into Miranda’s impeccable outfits with consummate ease and manifest pleasure, purring her lines rather than speaking them. Blunt is a hoot too, although we don’t see enough of her. Really this is Hathaway’s film, even if, as well she knows, there are scene-stealers all around.
The Devil Wears Prada 2 is in cinemas tomorrow.
