FILM OF THE WEEK: The Devil Wears Prada 2 - Reviewed by Roe McDermott

Twenty years have passed since Andy Sachs first stumbled into the merciless, glittering world of Runway magazine, and in The Devil Wears Prada 2, she returns to it with a different kind of authority. No longer the gawky assistant fresh out of college, Andy (Anne Hathaway) is now a recognised writer, someone who has ostensibly mastered her craft – even though the market for her craft may be dying.

The movie opens with a sharp, almost painful acknowledgement of the world Andy now inhabits: she and her entire reporting team are unceremoniously fired via text, a blunt, familiar image of how digital media has hollowed out print journalism. It’s a striking scene, one that frames the stakes of the film in the language of our contemporary media moment - the death of old forms, the rise of clicks and virality, the erosion of editorial authority, the lack of appreciation for art, truth and beauty.

But Andy isn’t unemployed long. Immediately, Andy is pulled back into Runway, hired as Features Editor to salvage the magazine after a scandal involving a glowing story about a sweatshop-funded fashion label has brought the magazine into disrepute. Now older, wiser, with some style lessons retained after the first movie, she’s thrust back into the world of Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep), who Andy still longs to impress – even if Miranda doesn’t remember who the hell she is.

The first film was about competence: Andy both marvelled at the excellence of Miranda Priestly while herself learning how to succeed in the job “a million girls would die for.” Beneath the Chanel boots, the glamour, and the makeover montages, the first film was about the effort, ambition, and rigor of women doing what they needed to achieve their ambitions.

The main cast of characters are still here, still being excellent, including Nigel (Stanley Tucci) as the indispensable consigliere, loyal and unshakably professional (though apparently tragically in stasis for the past two decades), while Emily (Emily Blunt) has ascended to the rarefied heights of a Dior executive, her edge, ego, and love of sharp lines and sharper insults all still intact.

In this sequel, Andy is more confident, but her professional life feels oddly inconsequential. Though lauded as a great writer, her skills are rarely shown onscreen. The two plot-driving crises - two secret deals to save Runway - are abstract and impersonal. Her triumphs are measured in assistant-style feats: securing interviews, tracking down phone numbers, coordinating events. The film foregrounds two villainous figures - a vain Bezos-esque tech bro (Justin Theroux hamming it up) and a nepotistic media heir (BJ Novak) - whose control over Runway underscores the power of billionaires over our media landcaspe, but these conflicts never feel lived-in or personal, leaving much of the action strangely hollow.

But it’s still pretty to look at. Though lacking the first film’s iconic makeover montage, Molly Rogers’ costumes and Florian Ballhaus’ cinematography deliver a kaleidoscope of style and beauty: Andy’s chic and professional workwear; a truly audacious funeral ensemble from Emily; and dramatic backdrops from Hamptons house parties to Milan’s Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II and Lake Como. The film is lavish, even if its messaging around wealth is ambivalent. Andy, despite writing about inequality, thrifting designer goods, and knowing how financially precarious journalism is, moves into a palatial luxury apartment and dates a property developer (Patrick Bramall, charming but underwritten). It's one of many instances where the movie gestures at big issues like capitalism, journalism, ethical consumption, and elitism but says very little.

But what it does say, it says wittily. Emily continues to hurl barbs and iconic moments of privilege-blind cluelessness (Andy asks her how many people can afford a $3000 handbag, to which Emily scoffs ‘Haven’t you heard of Christmas?!”) Meanwhile Miranda struggles with tighter HR rules, which require her to no longer throw coats or fatphobic insults at assistants.

The screenplay makes more room for Miranda to be vulnerable and sympathetic, like when defending the importance of art to Theroux’s capitalist villain, or when Miranda reflects to Andy on the cost of excellence - the sacrifices, the scrutiny, the misperceptions, the loneliness of being uncompromising in a world that mistakes female ambition for bitchiness - and concludes with the simple, irrepressible declaration: “But I just love working. Don’t you?” Andy’s beaming smile in response is the closest the film comes to emotional resonance, a fleeting recognition of shared dedication and purpose.

If what fans loved was just the glamour and froth and fun of the first movie, it’s here, replete with celebrity cameos, glamourous settings, fun callbacks to the original, and a lot of running around in high heels trying to impress Meryl Streep. It’s breezy, watchable, glamourous and fun – though I couldn’t help wishing that some of Andy’s commitment to intelligence, nuance, and her idealistic belief to integrity, truth and equality shone a little more. But then, maybe that’s just not Runway.

Directed by David Frankel. Written by Aline Brosh McKenna. Cinematography by Florian Ballhaus. Edited by Andrew Marcus. Music by Theodore Shapiro.
Starring Anne Hathaway, Meryl Streep, Stanley Tucci, Emily Blunt, Patrick Brammall, B.J. Novak, Simone Ashley, Justin Theroux, Kenneth Branagh, Lucy Liu, Tracie Thoms, Tibor Feldman, Lady Gaga.

• In cinemas now. Watch the trailer below.