Key Points
The first reviews of The Devil Wears Prada 2 are in.
The Anne Hathaway and Meryl Streep-led sequel arrives 20 years after the first film.
Critics point to the cast and nostalgia as highs, while wishing there was more substance.
The Devil Wears Prada 2 is primed to dominate the box office, but is it any good?
In 2006, The Devil Wears Prada charmed audiences and critics, between nabbing $320 million at the global box office and a 75 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes. Twenty years later, Anne Hathaway, Meryl Streep, Stanley Tucci, and Emily Blunt have reunited for the highly anticipated sequel, which finds their characters trying to navigate the new (depressing) media landscape.
Ahead of Friday’s release, the reviews from critics have arrived for director David Frankel’s fashion comedy, and so here’s your guide to the good, the bad, and the stylish of The Devil Wears Prada 2.
The Good
The two major common positives when it comes to the reviews are the cast and the film’s breezy nostalgia.
IndieWire‘s Kate Erbland declared, “Thank God” for Tucci’s “divinely calm and in-control Nigel,” and called Blunt “the franchise’s forever MVP, as absolutely batshit and too-often-right Emily.”
Meanwhile, in USA Today, Brian Truitt called out the “warm chemistry” between Hathaway and Tucci, but praised the relationship between Blunt’s Emily and Hathaway’s Andy as “the real throwback that works best.” He continued, “There’s bonding, butting heads and everything in between as the movie works to develop Blunt’s character a little more, and it makes up for the stuff that doesn’t work.”
Truitt also added that, to his surprise, Prada 2 is a “thoughtful examination of modern journalism.” He described the movie as “honest and clear-eyed as it digs into a media world where story clicks increasingly matter more than quality.”
The Devil Wears Prada has become one of the most rewatchable films of the 21st century, and for diehard fans who just want to return to a world that they fell in love with, many critics believe you’ll be thrilled.
The Hollywood Reporter‘s David Rooney wrote, “If you go into The Devil Wears Prada 2 looking for fierce fashion porn, bitchy put-downs and a fresh dose of Meryl Streep’s iconic performance as imperious Anna Wintour clone Miranda Priestly, you are unlikely to be disappointed.” He added that fans will “eat up” the sequel’s “familiar beats,” and that “the movie is best when it sticks to fluffy, fun nostalgia.”
Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway, and Stanley Tucci in ‘The Devil Wears Prada 2’
Credit: 20th Century Studios
The Bad
To be fair to Rooney’s THR review, after he said that Prada 2 is “best when it sticks to fluffy, fun nostalgia,” he concluded the sentence with “rather than shooting for substance.” And that last point is the shared negative consensus in the early reactions.
Variety‘s Guy Lodge wrote, “It is, by almost any metric, a lesser movie: narratively, emotionally and cinematically flatter, buoyed by game performances that nonetheless steadfastly fail to surprise.” He added that the film “functions less as a follow-up than as a kind of tribute act.”
Over at IndieWire, Erbland contended that the original film’s “punch and pop is missing this time around, bespoke comedy replaced here with strictly off-the-rack endeavors.”
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The Wrap‘s WIlliam Bibbiani’s “low-bar” for any sequel is that it just has to “justify its own existence,” and Prada 2 “doesn’t clear it.”
“The Devil Wears Prada 2 doesn’t have a coherent theme, so its vibes have nothing to stick to,” he wrote. “It never makes the convincing argument for its own existence, other than saying the journalism business stinks right now, and that there’s no solution that doesn’t involve billionaires who are more likely to ruin the industry than save it. Maybe that’s true but it’s not much of a movie. At least the gang’s all here, and the gang’s still charming, but the gang would have been better off doing something else.”
The Devil Wears Prada 2 arrives Friday in theaters.
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