The Devil Wears Prada 2 | Film Review

 

20 years after leaving her job at Runway, Andy (Anne Hathaway) is back. But after reuniting with old friends, old adversaries, and her old boss Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep) she discovers exactly how much can change in two decades.

The first movie is iconic, and absolutely one of my favourites, so I was really sceptical about this one from the very beginning. A sequel wasn't necessary, and there were so many ways that it could fall flat.

And unfortunately, it did.

I don't even know where to start. After getting back from the cinema I wrote down what I could remember, and a lot of it just ended up being things that I found really odd while watching. 

So let's start with the reason for the sequel. When I love a sequel, especially if time has passed, it's because the filmmakers hit the sweet spot between giving me the characters I loved, but also making them develop enough that I feel like they've grown. That's what I needed from this film.

And in some ways this worked. The Runway magazine is absolutely its own character in these movies, and I liked the way the magazine developed. We get to see it moving into the modern age, going digital. Plus the introduction of new characters was great.

Of the characters we know, Andy was the only one that probably grew in an authentic way, we got to see her career progression, and she's definitely not the same person she was before, in a good way.

I was completely stuck on Miranda's development. She felt almost like watered down version of her character in the first film. And while that's probably a commentary on what she's gone through in the industry, one of the reasons we loved the first one was because of her ruthlessness, her wit and honestly the fear she strikes in people. So why take so much of that away?

There were also some unnecessary characters that either got development or way too much focus when there was absolutely no need for this. For one, trying to turn this into a lacklustre love story for Andy made no sense - we didn't need to see so much of her new boyfriend.

And then there was the 'twist', which was fine but totally unnecessary to the story. Though it actually did make sense in terms of a character's development, but it had virtually no impact.

The best things about the film were things that were great about the first - the fashion, and the score. There wasn't as much focus on the fashion this time around because it wasn't about what the main character was wearing, but it still worked. And the score was powerful because a lot of it was the same as the first film, which added to the nostalgia.

There were also some fun cameos.

But overall, this film was unnecessary. The story wasn't as tight as it could have been, and while it was nice to see where the characters went after the first film, not enough worked to make this a worthy sequel.

6/10