Getting into generational discourse is not unlike diving deep into astrology: Every vague, contradictory statement feels true, especially when it’s what you want to hear. Are millennials, those born between 1981 and 1996, lazy or hardworking? Are they romantics or cynics? Are they poised to overturn the chaos in American politics, or is Gen Z going to be left holding the bag? It all depends on who you ask.
But if there is one millennial archetype that the media cannot resist, it is the try-hard girl-woman. Just this spring, writer-performer Lena Dunham published Famesick, a memoir about how being the “voice of a generation” meant working her mortal, chronically ill body into the ground. And earlier this year, in Life After Ambition: A “Good Enough” Memoir, writer Amil Niazi lays out the particularities of being a Pakistani Canadian millennial in a family without money, navigating atmospheres that left no room for error. “Did those gold stars or participation trophies really warp me,” she asks, “or did the promise that anything was possible if I was ambitious cause me to self-destruct?”
Looking back to the 2000s and 2010s, no one raised her hand higher or completed more extra-credit assignments than Anne Hathaway. Breaking through in 2001 with The Princess Diaries and going on to play a Cinderella figure in the 2004 Ella Enchanted, Hathaway came on the scene as the girl next door ready for her makeover montage. This positioned her perfectly to play the role of Andrea “Andy” Sachs in the 2006 film adaptation of Lauren Weisberger’s Anna Wintour–inspired roman à clef, The Devil Wears Prada. Under the unwilling tutelage of first assistant Emily (Emily Blunt), journalism grad and second assistant Andy struggles to gain the approval of Runway magazine’s Wintour-esque Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep). “This place that people would die to work, you deign to work,” scolds Runway’s fashion director, Nigel (Stanley Tucci). “And you want to know why she doesn’t give you a kiss on the forehead and put a gold star on your homework?”
Here we go again with the gold stars. The Devil Wears Prada had all the favorite tropes of the 2000s: a women’s magazine writer who aspires to serious journalism; a cute boyfriend who, subsequent rewatches reveal, is a self-absorbed jerk; an older woman supervisor-mentor whose tough love inspires the heroine to be true to a new and improved version of herself. It is also relentless in its attacks on women’s bodies, with Hathaway’s character flippantly referred to as the “smart, fat girl” in the office. It’s a satire of the fashion world, fine, but it also bought into many of the pressures placed on young women at the time.
The original Devil Wears Prada is a time capsule in a multitude of ways, down to the statement necklaces and the pageboy hat. The new sequel arrives after a long cultural reckoning with the toxicity of the turn of the millennium, and appeals to a demographic that is definitely older, potentially wiser, and demonstrably interested in exchanging generational nostalgia for cold, hard cash. Everyone here is slightly more understandable, more human—it would be hard not to be after 20 years of being a beloved character in a cult movie—and, as a result, the sequel never hits the unforgettably confident stride of the original.
First off, it must be said: All sequels are try-hards. Sequels need to serve the fans while striving to attract a new audience; to exploit what people most loved about the original by upping the ante (but leaving room for a third installment); and, if possible, to issue any corrections for the original. The Devil Wears Prada 2 aims for all of these except, perhaps, attracting new viewers. There are too many references to the original—from Andy’s blue sweater (“cerulean”) to the warning to “never go upstairs” in Miranda’s brownstone—to suggest new fans are a priority.
The film starts when Andy, now an accomplished writer for the New York Vanguard, is laid off by text—just as she is winning a journalism award. Her stirring acceptance speech on behalf of the fifth estate goes viral, attracting the attention of higher-ups at Runway. The magazine, and Miranda especially, is under fire for a poorly sourced feature on fast fashion, so Andy is brought in as their new features editor. Miranda doesn’t remember Andy—or, at least, that’s her head game of choice—and proves initially hostile to her old protégé’s return.
A lot has changed in 20 years: the magazine “book” that must be delivered to Miranda’s home is treated less like a biblical scroll than a DoorDash delivery, as Runway is largely digital; Miranda is no longer permitted to belittle employees within earshot of H.R. and has been reduced to hanging up her own coat, a move Streep executes with clumsy, yet regal, aplomb. Nigel is still executing Miranda’s vision without credit or approval, whereas Emily has moved on to a leadership role at Dior, one of Runway’s biggest advertisers.
But it’s not just the characters or the circumstances that have shifted, but the storytelling itself. Even as Streep stole the show the first time around with her frosty performance, the first Devil Wears Prada was entrenched in Andy’s point of view and her character arc. Would Andy become one of the fashion girls—what she and her boyfriend call the high-heeled “clackers”? And was joining the so-called “dark side” at Runway smart or just sad? In the midst of Andy’s fairytale journey, Emily was her rival, Nigel her fairy godfather, and Miranda the ostensibly evil stepmother shrouded in mystique.
The Devil Wears Prada 2 reserves top billing for Hathaway, but, now, the film is jointly told for and by all the leads from the original. Blunt has the most to do as a divorced mother of two who is just as determined as ever to succeed but might, this time around, want a friend too. Nigel’s long-suffering status as Miranda’s right-hand man is, unfortunately, one of the only notes Tucci gets to hit, though he plays it to the tune of some hefty screen time. (If Benoit Blanc can have a famous boyfriend cameo in Glass Onion, the second Knives Out film, why not our Nigel?)
And by getting too close to the Dragon Lady herself, the movie paints Streep into a corner, never allowing her to go too big and mean nor satisfyingly soft and vulnerable. (The millennial try-hard can’t quit a toxic boomer boss. Maybe she’s born with it; maybe it’s mommy issues.) She still tosses out her cutting remarks and politically incorrect insults, but the movie is so solidly Team Miranda that it grants her both a sexy yet age-appropriate partner (Kenneth Branagh) and the gift of empathy, a trait she never exhibits in the original.
To recount the plot points of The Devil Wears Prada 2 would be both dull, as exposition always is, and pointless, since no one watches these movies for narrative. The impeccably styled Hathaway, Streep, and Blunt can stride down city streets, through glamorous parties, and across helipads with the best of them, and that’s what the people have come to see. But, ultimately, the movie tries to do too much. Critiques of corporate consolidation in journalism (though film studios are tactfully never mentioned) and artificial intelligence are interspersed with various B-plots, including a budding romance for Andy, the teasing possibility of an Andy-authored Miranda Priestly exposé, and more than one crack at the frozen egg game. Some of it comes together, and some of it doesn’t.
The original Devil Wears Prada, for all its millennial blind spots, was as tight as an on-trend bandage dress, every scene working in service of a modest tale about ambition. It was a story in which women’s careerism is somehow both the hero and the antagonist—an ambivalence that the sequel resolves to resolve, once and for all. The Devil Wears Prada 2 just tries to do too much in its two-hour running time. It’s the cinematic equivalent of a cargo pant.
The Devil Wears Prada 2 does one thing better than its predecessor: It explains the why behind the work.
In the first Devil Wears Prada, Andy accidentally walks in on Miranda having a fight with her soon-to-be-ex-husband. Piqued beyond reason, Miranda demands that Andy get the unreleased manuscript of the upcoming Harry Potter book for her twin daughters, poised to fire her if she cannot complete this impossible task. Still, with the help of a sexy jerk in publishing, Andy gets the book, xeroxed and bound, a copy for each girl, and presents it coolly to her boss. “Anything else I can do for you?” Andy asks, a smile on her lips and an expletive in her eyes.
This is the try-hard’s revenge: to overdeliver, to achieve the unachievable, so as to be rewarded with … what exactly? If she hadn’t gotten the manuscript to Miranda, she would have been fired, but because she did, a different strain of misery and self-esteem erosion inevitably follows. The first prize for the pie-eating contest, as you well know, is more pie.
The Devil Wears Prada captured its millennial audience with the story of a recent graduate, a perpetual A student, still finding her way. Two decades later, these characters might still be chasing success, even the approval of others, but at least they know why they work as hard as they do. It is not just Andy and Miranda but new characters like Andy’s art dealer friend (Tracie Thoms) or the reclusive ex-wife of a billionaire (Lucy Liu) who express a keen appreciation for art and beauty. This second film is not just about fashion, then, but vision, taste, and craft in an era that values none of those things. It’s no wonder, and no accident, that one of the major set pieces of the film takes for its backdrop Leonardo da Vinci’s mural The Last Supper, a testament to artistic genius that can now be rented out for swanky events.
If girl-on-girl violence is the driving force of the first film, it is a passing threat in the sequel, where the bad guys are literally bad guys. The heterosexual male villains include an athleisure-wearing executive (B.J. Novak) and a space-obsessed, water-phobic billionaire (Justin Theroux) whose only endearing quality is that he thinks the model’s name is “Candle Jenner.”
Theroux’s character in particular, at turns goofy and chilling, dreams of a world in which fashion magazines would not be just paperless but people-less, literally soulless. A mix of Musk and Bezos, his monologue on art without humanity is probably one being uttered in studio boardrooms all over town, as makers and even performers are making the choice to embrace artificial intelligence.
But the women of The Devil Wears Prada 2 want to use their time, their effort, and their money to make things that are special and unique. If this is what it means to be try-hard, then good. To butcher a Mad Men quote: That’s what the trying is for. Even if the film itself cannot live up to its own lofty proclamations of artistic excellence, this sentiment alone is enough, I have to believe, to warrant more than the perfunctory gold star.
