The Devil Wears Prada 2

Isn’t it lovely when things turn out better than you imagined? The Devil Wears Prada 2 is one of those nice surprises, a so-called legacy sequel made with love and executed with flair. Think Top Gun: Maverick with better hats. 

Everything clicks like a Hermes clasp. There’s all the sass and energy of the 2006 original but none of the lazy repetition and box-ticking fan service that blights this kind of reboot (Tron, Ghostbusters, any number of Halloween movies). The plot finds fresh resonance for the era of late capitalism, tech bros and A.I. slop. So, basically a horror movie for modern journalists, but it also reaches out beyond its deadlines-and-hemlines milieu to give a timely glaze to such analogue concepts as art and beauty. 

Twenty years on from Andy Sachs’ (Anne Hathaway) departure from the mag, everything is changing at Runway – for the worse. A fast-fashion piece has inadvertently given a glow-up to a sweatshop, leaving Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep) facing a doxxing on social media, as her new big boss (a fabulously slimy BJ Novak) demands better numbers. Worse, she’s having to meet the finance bros in the canteen to talk budgets.

Andy has come a long way from the jumper-clad noob who didn’t know how to spell ‘Gabbana’ in the first film. She’s now an award-winning reporter whose newspaper team has just got the chop. When Runway calls, needing some crisis management, she’s not welcomed back. ‘Who is this?’ sniffs Miranda.

She spins through Miranda’s Rolodex of guilt trips and waspy put downs like she’s never been away

Streep, of course, can sell the idea that Miranda has erased Andy from her mind with a single raised eyebrow. She’s staggeringly good here, spinning through Miranda’s Rolodex of stinging guilt trips and waspy put downs like she’s never been away. Ditto Stanley Tucci as Nigel, that walking bon mot in a natty waistcoat, the Grace Coddington to Miranda’s Anna Wintour. Caleb Hearon, Jin Chao, and a standout Bridgerton’s Simone Ashley are the new breed of Runway-ers who bring greater diversity and more opportunities for Miranda to upset HR.

Emily Blunt’s Emily Charlton is now working at Dior but feeling the sting of being a necessary evil in Runway’s world. She’s dating a buffoonish, Steve Jobs-alike tech billionaire (Justin Theroux), which gives the plot its cartoony villain, while Lucy Liu brings glassy charm as his philanthropist ex-wife. It’s not a film that gives its straight characters – Kenneth Branagh as Miranda’s new hubbie and Colin From Accounts’ Patrick Brammall as Andy’s charming new Aussie love interest – a lot of heavylifting, and I think we can all live with that.

The house style is slickly familiar, with director David Frankel delivering plenty of sparkling New York skylines, glam Milanese cityscapes, fancy restaurant and fashion porn – plus all the usual celebrity cameos, and the odd crash zoom to add a sense of deadline-day desperation to it all.

Props to returning screenwriter Aline Brosh McKenna for staying true to the characters. Miranda is hanging up her own coat now, but that’s about as much as change as you can expect from novelist Lauren Weisberger’s band of backbiting fashionistas. When something looks this good, why change the cut? 

In cinemas worldwide May 1.