It’s been 20 years since we last saw the Runway gang strutting through the glass panel corridors trying to make it out alive. I once wondered, after two decades of absence how are they going to tell a new story and get these people back together? How can we catch up with these characters while going through their new stories within 2 hours? The runway was high and one wrong step you could just fall off like a fashion roadkill.
Yet The Devil Wears Prada 2 did not disappoint.
I didn’t manage to catch The Devil Wears Prada 2 in the theatre as I was busy at that time, so I am glad that it didn’t take that long for it to get on to streaming, after all, I did enjoy the last one despite a few bits that I felt could be done better. This time round, without characters that I did not like around, I think they delivered a much more focused while high stake enough story.
Picking up 20 years after the we last saw Miranda, Nigel, Andy and Emily, Runway is now an online publication that still holds gravitas within the fashion industry. Nigel’s bemoaning about how online contents is consumed nowadays was funny, relevant and yet sad, but he held on to it with his fingernails (as Emily put it) because of his loyalty we last witnessed 20 years ago. Miranda had moved on with her assistants and probably the number was so high that she lost track of every assistant’s name. Nonetheless circumstances transpired and Andy was “helicoptered” down as the new Features Editor to deal with a crisis under Miranda’s watch. While it is not up to Miranda to decide whether Andy stays or go, because it was her boss’ decision, Miranda is determined to think that she is the only way for Runway to move forward from this scandal and Andy is just another someone she’s buying time with.
Without giving away the story too much, the script was a lot tighter than I expected for a sequel seemingly made for cashing in. And in fact, I liked this story a lot better than the previous one as I could hardly find flaws in both the writing and characters depiction. Maybe not all of them made the right choice for their lives but at the same time it was a story about survival, and it was great to see our main four characters’ strategy to survive were very true their characters, whether you agreed with them or not. Also sprinkled across the 120 minutes were homage and references to the first film, and they were done in a throw away and natural way that you don’t feel pretentious or awkward.
Meryl Streep as Miranda continues to deliver. She certainly has changed, not in her demanding high standards way but how she tried to cope with a different world with different workplace behaviour expectations. Simone Ashley as her seemingly sassy first assistant responsible for reining back her boss’s cutthroat comments was always fun to watch. I like that she is partly Emily X.0 in terms of adaptiveness but she is also a person in her own right. Stanley Tucci’s Nigel is always sweet as a gummy bear. When you saw him going through his story, you just wished that you could give him a hug. It must have been a hard 20 years for him shaping him into the person we see now. Anne Hathaway’s Andy, who was on the top of her journalist game and got thrusted back into an organisation that she hoped was a stint again, was not just fish out of water, but a fish back into the same water after climate change had heated the environment up several notches. She still has the passion and she had more experience, she hasn’t changed as a person, but she is still green to this whole corporate politics game. The movie is incomplete without Emily Blunt’s Emily, who is now a power holder at Dior after surviving corporate politics after corporate politics. She is still good at her job, but she had made some questionable choices in her life. She might not see it, but in front of Miranda, she’s still a kitten.
To my surprise The Devil Wears Prada 2 was a rollercoaster ride, and to be able to put together an even more relevant story while being equally funny at the same time I was impressed. Those characters may not be their former self 20 years ago, but time has perfected them liked aged wine in this craftly built winery. Also, 20 years later, they really have the who’s who in the modern fashion industry and when you saw those cameos showing up one after another in the most natural setting, you just can’t help but think that the movie has become an establishment itself, just like the Runway empire it depicted.
I totally enjoyed The Devil Wears Prada 2, and now all I wish was that I saw it on the big screen and could enjoy that world in all its finest details.
The Devil Wears Prada 2 is now streaming on Disney+
