To say that a lot has changed in the past twenty years would be putting it mildly.  Take journalism, for example.  In The Devil Wears Prada, journalism graduates had career options.  Fast forward to today and I doubt any student would seriously consider being a reporter.  Print media has been supplanted by social media as the source of news for many people, making traditional journalists obsolete.  How Andrea “Andy” Sachs handles this shifting landscape is the basis of The Devil Wears Prada 2, a funny and thoroughly enjoyable sequel that manages to take a few well-earned swipes at the downsize-afflicted corporate environment of 2026.

Years ago, I was attending a conference when word spread that the IT company that was the focus of the conference had laid people off during the last day.  I remembered that while watching Andy Sachs (Anne Hathaway) learning that she and hundreds of her colleagues had gotten the axe while they were at an awards ceremony.  Any joy Andy would have normally expressed over winning an award was replaced by anger, which is reflected in her fiery acceptance speech.  Fortunately for her, a video of her speech immediately goes viral and gets her a job offer.

The offer is for Runway, the fashion magazine/conglomerate Andy left twenty years ago to become a respected reporter.  This sort of “coming full circle” irony only happens in the movies, but something had to force Andy to reunite with colleagues.  Her job is to be the media director for Runway, who lost oodles of credibility when the company is linked to sweatshop labor.  Who better to reform the company’s image than a serious reporter who has a history at said company?

Andy isn’t sure she should accept the offer, even though it pays twice as much as her old job.  Her group of friends think she’s crazy, and Andy quickly comes to her senses.  Better to toil on behalf of fashion trends than work at Starbucks, after all.  Besides, the extra money enables her to buy an apartment designed by architect and romantic prospect Peter (Patrick Brammall).

Andy is naturally giddy at returning to her first professional gig.  Her old pal Nigel Kipling (Stanley Tucci) is still there, and his trademark tart words show that he still likes her.  Andy is geeked to see her domineering former boss Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep), but she feigns ignorance of who she is.  Is her reaction an act?  With Miranda, you never really know where you stand, which is exactly how she prefers her relationships with underlings to be.

One of Andy’s first assignments is to go with Miranda to Dior to grovel.  Lo and behold, Andy’s old nemesis Emily (Emily Blunt) works there as a senior executive.  After Emily successfully haggles free advertising pages for her company, she also wins a puff piece about her from Andy.  For her part, Andy is pleased as punch to see her frenemy again, who is married to billionaire chucklehead Benji (Justin Theroux)

At first, Andy tries to make her mark with serious thought pieces for the company’s digital experience.  They get very few clicks, unfortunately, and Miranda’s boss Irv Ravitz (Tibor Feldman) tells her Andy needs to generate more web traffic or else.  Andy comes up with the idea of getting an interview with Sasha Barnes (Lucy Liu), who hasn’t spoken to the media in three years.  That would be a coup for Runway and would put a very positive spin on the company’s media presence.

But how can Andy land the holy grail of interviews?  While researching Sasha, Andy notices a painting in the background of a photo and turns to her old friend and art gallery proprietor Lily (Tracie Thoms) for help.  After following through on every connection she makes, Andy finally gets confirmation for a sit-down.  Miranda is pleased and Andy is confident she’s earned her keep for the duration.

But then life happens.  Irv’s unexpected demise puts everything associated with Runway in doubt, including Miranda’s long-delayed promotion.  Irv’s son Jay (BJ Novak) is only interested in corporate synergies and plans huge cuts at Runway to make it more profitable.  The cuts even affect Runway’s weeklong fashion extravaganza in Italy, where Miranda is reduced to flying coach.  Horrors!

It’s in Italy where Prada 2 becomes intriguing.  Andy uses her knowledge of Jay’s plans for Runway to lure a white knight, only to realize that she handed the keys to the kingdom to a corporate raider with no taste and no soul.  That leaves it up to Andy to right her wrong before Miranda is forced to give fashion advice to commoners on the street.

Recommendation

The Devil Wears Prada 2 is a very good legacy sequel.  It closely resembles the former, which had a winning combination both in front of and behind the camera.  All of the principles have returned–including the director and the writers–which went a long way towards recapturing the essence of what worked twenty years ago.  Thankfully, the movie is more than an anniversary party.

The story is timely, rooted in the demise of traditional media in favor of “digital experiences”.  Additionally, it explores the dynamics between Anne Hathaway’s Andy and her work family and how they evolve over the course of the movie.  The film may be a comedy, but it’s also acutely aware of how our behavior is shaped by our past, no matter how much we believe we’ve changed.  In addition to being really funny, the movie is noticeably respectful towards its characters and never uses them for cheap laughs.  Instead, they’re complex people with flaws who recognize them and grow.  Despite the glamorous backdrop, these characters are fully-realized, relatable and sympathetic, and I enjoyed my time with them.

In terms of the familiar, Prada 2 includes a hearty dose of everything that made the original so singular.  There’s plenty of fabulous outfits, celebrity cameos, thumping dance music, snappy dialog and downtown New York scenery that will make fans feel right at home.  The actors give the same performances as before, and the story moves along at a breezy clip.

As someone who is late to this franchise, I was won over by the charming leading performances in both films.  Hathaway is a perfect fit for Andy, an actor who is naturally bright, chirpy and energetic.  With her megawatt smile, she’s like a female version of Tom Cruise.  Although she’s a solid dramatic actress and won an Academy Award for Les Misérables, she’s better suited to comedic roles like Andy IMHO.

As her foil, Streep has Miranda’s churlishness down pat, but she gets to show some vulnerability here as well.  Emily Blunt is delightfully haughty as Emily and stole every scene she’s in.  (The best decision the original movie made was letting her use her British accent.)  As this movie proves, she definitely should appear in more comedies.  Stanley Tucci is still masterful at delivering sarcastic retorts.  If anyone’s considering making a movie about William Burroughs’ later years, Tucci should get the part.

The supporting cast also includes Kenneth Branagh in the most casual performance of his career as Miranda’s calming influence.  Justin Theroux is hilarious and almost unrecognizable as Blunt’s comically oafish husband Benji.  Lucy Liu brings compassion to what is basically a cameo.  Only BJ Novak’s performance fell flat for me, but his character’s severely underwritten.  Lastly, I was charmed by Helen J Shen as Andy’s perky assistant.

Similar to the last Bridget Jones movie, The Devil Wears Prada 2 works well as a class reunion of characters we love.  That said, it’s also a funny, effervescent and touching workplace comedy led by a terrific cast.  Recommended.

Analysis

I don’t envy filmmakers who make a legacy sequel like The Devil Wears Prada 2.  They need to give fans more of what they liked the first time around, but somehow make the movie different enough so it doesn’t feel like a retread.  Since twenty years have passed, the sequel can’t copy the plot from the original, mainly because Andy’s no longer a babe in the proverbial woods.  (She also learned how to dress for success back then.)  That leaves the interpersonal dynamics between Andy and her Runway colleagues as the justification for revisiting these characters, and Prada 2 handles it in an insightful way that makes the experience worthwhile.

The original movie riffs on both All About Eve and That Sweet Smell of Success, where Andy’s relationship with Emily is the former and her relationship with Miranda being the latter.  In the end, Andy decides it isn’t worth selling her soul to outmaneuver Emily and win the approval of Miranda and decides to quit Runway and become a journalist.  She triumphs by leaving her toxic relationships behind and pursuing her dream.

The sequel uses Andy’s return to Runway to explore how she interacts with her colleagues the same way as before, despite much time having passed and her having established herself professionally.  Although she’s now in her forties, in her mind she’s still a struggling twenty-something trying to please her impossible boss Miranda, befriend Emily and learn the ropes from Nigel.  That the three acted as her surrogate family only reinforces her mental reset into the past.  Miranda is her mother, Nigel her father and Emily her sister.

Once Andy is back at Runway she immediately reverts into people-pleaser mode.  She works tirelessly for Miranda’s approval, first by churning out important think pieces, then by working her network to land a coveted interview.  The latter succeeds in winning Miranda’s approval, but she oversteps her bounds upon learning that new owner Jay Ravitz plans to downsize Elias-Clarke and jettison Miranda.  Andy views her mother figure as helpless and injects herself into the situation as her savior.

Unfortunately, Andy turns to the one person she shouldn’t trust for help, her figurative step-sister Emily.  Like Andy, she also craved Miranda’s appreciation and has been harboring resentment for twenty years over Miranda placing her at Dior.  When Andy gives Emily the inside scoop, she effectively gives her step-sister the means for revenge, which is kicking Miranda to the curb and succeeding her.

The fix Andy finds herself in is due her inaccurate perception of Miranda and Emily.  She still treats them as prickly family members who can be won over by her friendliness and work ethic, not as adults with their own agendas.  Andy desperately wants to make her family happy and love her in return, when she should have kept focusing on herself and her career.

To my surprise, the film has Andy resolve her problems on her own.  Even better, it has her do so in a way that reflects her growing maturity.  Andy realizes that she and Emily can be friends, so she circumvents her while bringing Sasha on board.  Andy also begrudgingly accepts Miranda’s advice to accept the book deal, because it’s her career and Andy doesn’t owe her anything.

The most satisfying aspect of Andy’s growth is when she helps Miranda understand how she’s taken Nigel, her long-suffering work spouse, for granted.  In a rare moment of kindness, Miranda lets Nigel take her leadership role in Runway that he’s always wanted.  If the self-centered and egotistical Miranda can develop even a modicum of empathy, anything’s possible, right?

The (belated) return of comedies

It’s taken a long time for a comedy to break through with audiences.  The Devil Wears Prada 2 will be the first live-action comedy to break $100m at the US box office in many years.  Friends tell me the last time that happened was 2018’s Crazy Rich Asians ($174m).  The closest we’ve gotten since has been:

• No Hard Feelings (2023, $50m)
• One of Them Days (2025, $50m)
• The Naked Gun (2025, $52m)
• Freakier Friday ($94m, 2025)
• The Devil Wears Prada 2 ($144m and counting, 2026)

What stands out is that four of the five are fronted by women, and three of the five are sequels.  Hollywood is famously risk-averse, so this would explain why most of these are sequels.  But women picking up the comedy baton in the absence of men is surprising.

A couple other recent comedies, Joy Ride ($12m) and Bottoms ($12m) both from 2023, may also explain the prevalence of sequels.  Both of those movies were led by women but underwhelmed at the box office.

It’s great that the major studios are bringing comedies back to theaters.  And the results of Prada 2 should go a long way towards re-convincing Hollywood that audiences like to see comedies in theaters, and that women like seeing good movies targeted at them.  I hope they continue releasing original comedies, though, because there are only so many twenty year-old comedies that deserve sequels.

Emily Blunt, rising star

I’m being a bit tongue-in-cheek here, because Blunt has been a professional actress for twenty-two years.  I first noticed her in 2012’s Looper, and from my perspective she’s been steadily climbing in prominence ever since.  Three films that followed solidified her as a leading actor with cross-genre appeal: Edge of Tomorrow (2014), the big budget Tom Cruise science fiction vehicle, The Girl on the Train (2016), a steamy chick-lit thriller, and A Quiet Place (2018),  an apocalyptic horror movie.  She finally got an Academy Award nomination for Oppenheimer in 2023, which seems like a long time given that her Prada 2 co-star Anne Hathaway had been nominated twice and won eleven years prior.

While seeing Hathaway, Streep, Tucci and Blunt together again was a lot of fun, Blunt was the film’s secret weapon.  Whenever she reappeared, she energized the movie with her vitality.  All members of the quartet are unqualified stars, but Blunt outshone them with her glamor and hilarious snootiness.

I mentioned above that Blunt should seriously consider doing more comedies.  Her quick delivery and expressiveness is very well-suited to comedic rhythms.  Along those lines, she reminds me of actresses in the thirties and forties, who were beautiful, refined, intelligent and extremely funny.  For example, wouldn’t it be something to see Blunt in a revival of The Thin Man, which featured Claudette Colbert and Myrna Loy?

It feels like a long time since actresses like Juliet Roberts, Cameron Diaz and Renée Zellweger routinely brought audiences to theaters on a regular basis to laugh.  If nobody else is willing to headline theatrical comedies, why not Blunt?