In David Frankel’s “The Devil Wears Prada 2”, the iconic fashion magazine “Runway” is rattled by the news that they had unknowingly platformed a fast fashion brand and, in retribution, are being threatened with annihilation by mutinous advertisers and a billionaire owner eager to offload the beloved, if toothless, institution. You might be tempted to consider this a good sign for the film, a willingness to be critical of a practice that runs rampant throughout the fashion industry worldwide. However, I suspect the more damnable crime in the eyes of the movie is the diminished quality of the clothes themselves, and not the crass exploitation of human beings paid pennies for the benefit of international business interests. What could have been a reckoning with something real and systemic instead resigns itself to being merely a bauble barely worth examination, little more than an accessory easily discarded before walking out the door. Such is the mentality of “The Devil Wears Prada 2,” less a movie than a brand extension tailor-made to be shotgunned to Disney +, where it will not be considered but consumed. There is a version of this movie that has a point of view, nay, even a single thing worthy of being said. Instead, what we are left with is a pleasant, if sadly unsurprising, film best left to grow mold in the bargain bin.
“The Devil Wears Prada 2” opens with our characters from the original film at a crossroads. Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep) is hoping to secure a promotion from her parent company while dealing with the fallout of the fast fashion debacle, with her trusty second in command, Nigel (Stanley Tucci), dutifully by her side. Meanwhile, Andy (Anne Hathaway) is stunned to learn that her award-winning newspaper has been decimated with downsizing, leaving her and her writer friends without jobs. In an effort to save face, Andy is hired by the publisher as the new Features Editor of “Runway”, hoping to bring some credibility to the lumbering dinosaur of print media that seems moments from extinction. Andy is surprised to learn that Miranda did not know about her hiring, and is ungrateful for her former protege’s intrusion into her affairs. To top things off, one of the advertisers meaning to bail on “Runway” entirely is Dior, run by Miranda’s former assistant Emily (Emily Blunt). Thus begins a tug of war between the old guard and the new as the fate of not just “Runway”, but also Miranda’s legacy and Andy’s livelihood hangs in the balance as the biggest fashion event of the year looms and the capitalistic vultures are circling in hopes of taking a big fat bite out of the house the titular devil built.
“The Devil Wears Prada 2” does, in its own tepid way, pay lip service to several ideas worth exploring, which might have made this film a worthwhile endeavor beyond the cheap pageantry of familiar faces saying familiar lines familiarly. Concerns like the cratering of journalistic institutions, the thinning of attention spans in a social media world, the mindless gluttony of corporations, and the weaselly excess of lame brained billionaires for whom the world is their LEGO set are all considered and undermined just as quickly, side-stepped in favor of a story that glorifies the fashion industry, the benevolence of the right kind of uber-rich benefactors, and the dawning realization that when nothing can be made better the best you can do is blow the whistle as your train plummets into an oblivion. Perhaps this is too much heft to be shouldered by the twenty-year sequel to a film about a young woman’s travails working for a bad boss in the cutthroat world of high fashion journalism, and yet watching the original “The Devil Wears Prada” is like peering through a portal to a better, more complicated, and nuanced time not just in cinema but in the world. In that film, Andy is idealistic and a bit of a snob, taking the job at “Runway” to further her career without any care for the artistic value of fashion. Miranda is as ruthless as her reputation, throwing barb after barb at Andy to see if she might flinch, barely allowing for a single scrap of sentiment until the closing seconds of the movie. The ecosystem of “Runway” is problematic, egotistical, brutal, and mean, which feels to be the point. While Andy becomes consumed by her need to seek the approval of the woman she both reviles and admires, she loses herself in ambition and has to pull herself back from the brink. Rest assured, she makes mistakes, including attempting to take back her whiny boyfriend (Adrian Grenier), yet there is nuance in her growth; a truly funny, if often brutal, coming-of-age story draped in luxury that challenges as much as it dazzles. Why am I lavishing so much praise on the original film? Because the follow-up, developed and churned out by the Walt Disney Corporation’s easy cash-in sequel machine, has no interest in drama and suffers the same plight of all films made with so little regard for the intelligence of its audience, in that it cannot allow any of its characters to be people. There are no choices made that are irreversible, no snide remarks that cut deeper than the foundation line, no idea that sniffs at controversy, or “devil” in the film at all. Lame attempts at humor include Miranda not understanding the phrase “body positivity” and B.J. Novak’s nepo-billionaire saying “people” instead of “guys” in business meetings. Did anybody want this? It’s hard to deny that the body shaming of Andy’s character in the original film was a product of its time, yet it felt honest to the rarified, destructive air of high fashion. While Meryl Streep might feel like everyone’s quirky aunt, Miranda is meant to be a prickly bush of a person; more apt to draw blood than a smile. There is none of that here; making her out to be a sad relic fleeing over the hill rather than an immovable object able to bend unstoppable time in its tracks. The film, at Anne Hathaway’s insistence, apparently tried to use models that are not unhealthily skinny, which is admirable, and yet there is not a single plus-sized model to be seen. Every other sequence reeks of product placement or self-aggrandizement while trying to present a familiar, if overly microwaved, version of the original film. Perhaps the worst part of all is that these characters are still somehow delightful on screen. Hathaway is reclaiming her status as a movie star, Meryl’s presence somehow shines through the wax paper story, and even Emily Blunt’s return wrings out some of the biggest laughs in the movie. It is merely Stanley Tucci who feels to be sleepwalking, though perhaps that can be chalked up to him having little to nothing to do in the movie besides being the wizened confidant. What we are left with is a movie and a band of characters that feel force-fit onto ill-shaped dress forms. These actors deserve better, as do their fictional counterparts. They deserve to strut instead of being held stagnant, to flaunt instead of flounder.
The film’s boogeyman is the long, lingering death of media at the hands of conglomerates. A significant portion of Andy and Miranda’s work in the movie is to keep “Runway” from being gobbled and regurgitated as mere content and to keep mass layoffs from decimating their hard-working staff. This is ironic, considering just last month, The Walt Disney Company laid off one thousand employees with the incoming tenure of new CEO Josh D’Amaro, a move that ravaged their television businesses, marketing departments, and movie studio as well. This is nothing new; layoffs occur anytime there is new overlordship in a media empire, yet it doesn’t stop the release of “The Devil Wears Prada 2” from feeling more akin to brand management, of overt propaganda, than a film worthy of anyone’s time or attention. Ultimately, the heroes of this story are well-meaning billionaires, aloof elites who promise to be hands-off and to allow the creatives to run the asylum, a laughably fantastical concept. That the movie does not even blink at the absurdity of this baby-brained, Pollyanna world view says as much about its allegiances to the ruling class of capitalists as it does our subservience to them. It’s not fair to say “The Devil Wears Prada 2” is about nothing because it assuredly is about something. It’s about a dystopia in cerulean blue, where we fool ourselves into believing that the powerful will reach down and save us from drowning in the afterbirth sludge wrought by their unfettered excess and consumption. Sadly, there is no assistance coming from on high, merely the heel of a Chanel boot meant to push us lower into the abyss until the bubbles stop rising and our protestations go lax.
“The Devil Wears Prada 2” is perfectly fine until you scratch below the dermal layer to see that this thing, which takes the shape of a movie you once loved, is, in reality, filled with festering insects and corporate slime. Perhaps that is a bit dramatic, but frankly, we deserve better. How do I know? Because we got it once upon a time, it was called “The Devil Wears Prada”.
If you’re of a mind to see Anne Hathaway on the big screen in a movie about fashion, check out “Mother Mary”. Trust me.
You’ll be glad you did.
“The Devil Wears Prada 2” is playing at Prytania Uptown, Prytania Theatres at Canal Place, and The Broad Theater.
