An elegant and charming sequel, but nothing innovative

When “The Devil Wears Prada” debuted in 2006, It reshaped Meryl Streep’s career. and cemented Miranda Priestly as an iconic, icy antagonist. Along with Emily Blunt’s acerbic Emily, Anne Hathaway’s overwhelmed Andy Sachs, and Stanley Tucci’s scene-stealing Nigel, the film became a pop culture touchstone, immortalized by quotable lines that are still widely recognized today. Based on the novel of the same name by Lauren Weisberger, “The Devil Wears Prada” only came about thanks to Streep’s star powerbut it is the continued cultural relevance in an industry desperate to exploit existing intellectual property that has brought us a sequel 20 years later.

While working at a magazine was one of the preferred workplaces for female-led comedies in the 2000s, the print media landscape is almost unrecognizable in 2026. Not even prestigious awards for her work as a journalist can protect Andy from the cruel hammer of corporate restructuring and the grim reality that people would rather scroll than read, because they’re out of a job within the first 10 minutes. Fortunately, she is immediately picked up by “Runway” magazine, tasked with rehabilitating “Runway” after a public relations disaster. This allows her to reunite with all of our favorites from the original film, including Emily, who now works for Dior, and meet the “new Emilys,” Amari (Simone Ashley) and Charlie (Caleb Hearon), as well as her own assistant. Jin (Helen J. Shen).

Despite Andy’s growth, Miranda, unsurprisingly, has no faith in her. But even the baddest boss of them all is no match for the relentless control of late-stage capitalism and the changes in modern media. Faced with existential threats to publishing, these former adversaries must collaborate to save “Runway,” or risk having this pillar of fashion publishing join the traditional media graveyard.

“The Devil Wears Prada 2” has some serious Jimmy Choos to fill and often feels restricted by the weight of the original’s legacy. Everyone rightly hated Andy’s original boyfriend, Nate (Adrian Grenier), but at least he mattered. By contrast, her new love interest, Peter (Patrick Brammall), while effortlessly charming, is ornamental at best. I love that Andy has grown to a point where he can “have it all,” but their relationship has no importance to the rest of the plot. Nate might have sucked, but at least he provided conflict that helped motivate the story. Peter feels like he’s checked off the “romantic subplot.”

This time Miranda is remarkably restrained, but it’s a fascinating shift that reflects the evolution of acceptable behavior in the workplace and the harsh reality that not even Miranda Priestly is immune to the prioritization of digitalization. Meryl Streep imbues Miranda with a previously unseen vulnerability, but the script is frequently riddled with The “tell, don’t show” methodology currently destroying American streaming television. Fortunately, the performances are so charming, and Molly Rogers’ stunning, sequined costume design is such a feast that it’s easy to overlook the script’s shortcomings on the handheld, like a baby with jingling keys. It helps that brands that were terrified of upsetting Anna Wintour, on whom Miranda is supposedly based, the first time around, are happy to sign up. now that he has embraced the character.

Tragically, nothing in the script comes close to the memorability of the cerulean monologue or the exchange of “Are you wearing the…” “Chanel boots? Yes, I am” or Nigel’s heartfelt confession of why “Runway” means so much to him, but hearing Anne Hathaway cry about the importance of journalism made me cry.

There’s a noticeable increase in body diversity compared to the first film, but don’t mistake that for progress because the underlying message is still pretty stale. Justin Theroux’s Benji Barnes is a cartoonishly obvious mix of every embarrassing tech oligarch archetype, while his ex-wife, Sasha (Lucy Liu), is a “good billionaire” counterpart like MacKenzie Scott. Theroux makes a meal out of his character and earned the biggest laugh when he actually thought, during a discussion about Kendall (presumably Jenner), that a model was named “Candle.” But the presentation of his character through a pre-divorce magazine opts for a grotesque prosthetic double chin, which evokes the one Ryan Reynolds wears in “Just Friends” but worse.

I recognize that this is a film about the notoriously image-obsessed fashion industry, but that doesn’t excuse the scattered jokes where fatness itself is treated as inherently funny. At one point, Miranda flies economy class in a middle seat (I understand times are tough, but she’s already rich so this would never happen, but I digress.), and his nightmare scenario is sitting next to a fat man with a neck pillow eating a sandwich, minding his own business. There’s a line where Miranda struggles to refer to plus-size models as “body positive” and reflexively calls it “body negative.” YAWN. It’s doubly disappointing considering that the movie was smart enough to cast Caleb Hearon, one of the funniest comedians working today, as one of Miranda’s assistants, and completely waste it.

The movie unintentionally (at least, I hope it is) equates size with value, where if you’re an embarrassing loser billionaire, you’ll be portrayed as a bloated, bald idiot who can somehow catch Emily Blunt, but if you’re an altruistic billionaire, you can be Lucy Liu. Casual fatphobia? In 2026? How old-fashioned.

I deeply appreciate the criticism that “The Devil Wears Prada 2” makes in denouncing the calculated decline of the media landscape and the deterioration of culture thanks to late-stage capitalism sucking the soul out of everything to pursue the Icarian endgame of a terminal growth rate, but there is a cruel irony considering that the film itself does exactly that. He shouts that “journalists are vital” while flooding crowd scenes with online personalities and influencers (the same people who ban journalists) and failing to acknowledge how bad things really are for journalists by giving Andy an immediate new job and the chance to move into a luxury apartment a few weeks later.

It insists that destroying cultural institutions and reducing them to parts erodes our quality of life, while constantly referencing the memorable parts we loved from the original film and offering nothing new of comparable caliber, despite a significantly larger production budget. Visually, the film doubles down on this contradiction. Each frame is polished to a high shine, lit so aggressively that it flattens texture and drains personality. What once seemed cinematic now seems like an expensive commercial, and it’s hard not to be cynical when it constantly proves that individual wealth is the only lifeline for struggling people and industries.

The characters remain inherently watchable, so there’s a basic pleasure in returning to them, but that’s ultimately the problem: Affect does the heavy lifting that narrative doesn’t. For a film that insists on the value of art, it certainly seems like an expensive imitation. I liked it very well, because I love these characters in this world, but in the end… that’s it.

/Movie rating: 6 out of 10

“The Devil Wears Prada 2” hits theaters on May 1, 2026.