(courtesy IMP Awards)
Sequels are curious things.
People crave, desire, need and want them because who doesn’t want to see a story continue, but they are, often more than not, disappointed by them because while scratch an itch, it’s only on the viewing (or the reading etc) that it’s realised the itch didn’t really need to be scratched at all.
Even knowing this, this reviewer ran, and didn’t even think of walking into The Devil Wears Prada 2, eager to see what had happened to Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep), Andrea “Andy” Sachs (Anne Hathaway), Nigel Kipling (Stanley Tucci) and Emily Charlton (Emily Blunt) twenty years after the events of the first film.
If you recall, the first film in the now duology, and now with the laws of Hollywood invoked, soon to be a trilogy, Andy landed a job, her breakthrough gig into the hyper competitive world of journalism, at Runway magazine, blissfully unaware of the fashionably clad dog-eat-dog mentality that prevailed there with the alpha canine most assuredly the editor-in-chief Miranda.
A woman of well-deserved fearsome reputation, Miranda made Andy’s life hell, putting her through her paces with a gruesome cruelty that moderated just enough for Miranda, at the end of the film, to recommend Andy for a job at a New York newspaper.
Thus, having survived and earned Miranda’s respect, reached a workable detente with Emily and become fast friends with the every dependable Nigel, Andy got her big break into the world of newspaper journalism forever to reign asa highly awarded, fearsomely determined investigative reporter.
But in today’s harrowingly competitive digital world, forever is a very rubbery and near non-existent concept, and as The Devil Wears Prada 2 kicks off, Andy and her reporter pals find themselves desperately in need of fresh gigs in a small and rapidly diminishing pool.
This is not the world of the first film, and you only realise that fully when Miranda observes that she last saw Andy in a a world (2006) when iPhones, and really phones generally, weren’t the ubiquitous devourers of intelligence and dispensers of dubiously arrived-at information they are today.
And at a time when people actually bought paper newspapers and there was so much money sloshing around magazine budgets you a publication like Runway could send a team to a glam locale, do a lengthy shoot and keep themselves in luxury while they did so.
Those days are long gone, and when Andy joins Runway as the Features Editor and starts writing serious pieces that will hopefully bring some gravitas to the ailing digital-only mag which is hostage to the whims of advertisers and famously at the mercy of readers with the attention span of inattentive gnats, it’s a grim situation indeed, with much of the glam gone from the world over which Miranda still presides with frosty authority.
It seems like Runway may yet survive the foul, cold winds of the digital information winter, but as Andy is settling into her new gig, excited she may actually be able to do some good in a place once harried and shunned her to a large degree, she discovers that the magazine may be about to be sold for parts and Miranda … well, let’s just say it doesn’t look good.
It’s this outside existential threat to the mag that drives much of the narrative of The Devil Wears Prada 2 which, while it may not have the savage bite of its predecessor, definitely has a thing or two to say about the current state of journalism, fashion and indeed anything that the modern neoliberalists deem has no real value (which is, sadly, anything that has no obvious economic value so goodbye arts and entertainment etc.)
The Devil Wears Prada 2 is thus a rallying cry to save what can be saved in the perilously placed world of journalistic endeavour, which means of course that former adversaries, chiefly Miranda and Andy, but also Emily and Andy who may yet be friends (WTF?!!), end up as allies in a desperate bid to stop Runway from going the way of many other journalistic Dodos.
All of which means that if you were looking for the seamlessly delivered snark and cruelty of the first film, which was delivered with an arch eye and an unmerciful perspective, you will be disappointed.
If, however, you appreciate that after the limited detente of the first film’s ending that the second can’t possibly be that bitchily adversarial or you’re simply doing the same plot all over again in two decades-on new clothes, and that there must be some rapprochement that lasts beyond the opening scenes, you’ll appreciate what director David Frankel and writer Aline Brosh McKenna (both returnees from the The Devil Wears Prada) do in the sequel.Their
Their decision to build sensibly on where the characters landed at the end of the first film means that The Devil Wears Prada 2 is far more immediately feel good that its predecessor, with the sequel refusing to simply retread what has gone before, taking its characters, their relationships still forged in the searing fiery story of The Devil Wears Prada, to somewhere new that recognises there is some lingering familiarity, even between people who were once fearsomely enemies of each other.
Miranda is humanised to a degree necessary if you didn’t want to her to just be a shrill caricature of the person she was in The Devil Wears Prada, especially in scenes with her lovely new boyfriend, Stuart Simmons (Kenneth Branagh), Andy is an accomplished journalist and has a chance at love with Peter (Patrick Brammall) , Nigel has a chance to really fly and not simply exist in Miranda’s shadow, and, yes, even Emily actually finds some sort of heart, however amusingly intermittent.
True, The Devil Wears Prada 2 is not what its predecessor was, but it couldn’t be if you wanted a sequel that actually carries the story of the principal four characters rewardingly forward, and it leaves you feeling that even though the modern digital world can be overwhelmingly negative and vicious and a destroyer of more than it builds, it is possible to get some wins if you remember that humanity and community, friendship and love still hold some power, and if deftly employed, may yet have the edge over a world that has long forgotten how potent they can be.