David Frankel’s 2007 film, “The Devil Wears Prada,” is lightning in a bottle. Frankel is, at best, a mediocre director. Every other film he’s made is largely unsuccessful, and the direction of “The Devil Wears Prada” is far from stellar, but it somehow manages to be delightfully charming and enjoyable, and is one of the signature films of the 2000s. Most of this credit goes to the performances: Meryl Streep at the tail end of her acting prime, Anne Hathaway and Emily Blunt continuing to burst onto the scene and Stanley Tucci maintaining his character-acting dominance, it’s a nearly flawlessly acted and casted film.
Given this miracle quality of the original film, “The Devil Wears Prada 2” released May 1, seemed like a bad idea from the start. There was little room to work with coming off the end of the first movie, and like most legacy sequels, there wasn’t a need for another entry. The biggest issue—which also reared its ugly head in the first—is that all the characters are closer to caricatures than to fully fleshed-out people.
Streep’s Miranda Priestly is brilliant, but Frankel and screenwriter Aline Brosh McKenna seem to have little idea of who her character actually is. In the first, she’s an icy semi-manical genius who has very few moments of weakness. She’s at the top of her game, operating the gargantuan media corporation, the fashion magazine “Runway” masterfully. She doesn’t feel like a real person, but that’s okay; McKenna crafts up enough witty one-liners and pointed remarks to push her along as a remarkably entertaining character. In the second, they attempt to delve more into her character, which is their first major mistake. Heartfelt moments between her, Hathaway’s Andie Sachs and Tucci’s Nigel Kipling don’t only feel out of place, they’re astonishingly fake and forced. That’s not who Priestley is; it’s not what the films are about. Trying to establish this peer-like emotional connection between Priestley and the rest of the leads is one of many major missteps that “The Devil Wears Prada 2” makes.
In addition to this faulty humanization of Priestley, the film disarms her semi-problematic remarks and brutal judgment of her employees as they attempt to modernize this workplace environment for a more socially aware audience. There’s an entire character for this purpose: Priestley’s new assistant, Amari (Simone Ashley), who consistently censors her remarks in real time throughout the film — a move the viewer can assume is intended to provide a different type of comedy than the first — is only moderately successful. On top of their first major mistake with Priestley, this one furthers her from who she was in the original film, and makes her character even more confusing.
The second major misstep of “The Devil Wears Prada 2” is the return of Blunt’s Emily Charlton. Charlton was one of the best parts about the first movie, but she felt incredibly forced into the second narrative. In the first, she was Priestley’s assistant, opposite of Sachs, where they developed a well-made love-hate relationship. This time around, Frankel and McKenna shove her into the role of lead retail executive at Dior for the sole purpose of opposing Sachs and Priestley. Blunt is once again fantastic, but her character feels almost entirely unnecessary to the plot.
The third, and biggest misstep, is Hathaway’s Sachs. Part of the first film’s success comes from not having a main character; it’s essentially a two-hander between Priestley and Sachs, and it gives hefty narrative weight to Charlton and Nigel. The second film diverges from this, treating Sachs as the lead character. Sachs isn’t nearly interesting enough of a character to propel the narrative, and all of her solo sideplots are by far the worst parts of the movie. Her wishy-washy, weak romance with the building developer, Peter (Patrick Brammell), is devastating to the small amount of momentum the narrative could muster. And, most disappointingly, Hathaway gives a flat-out bad performance. She’s passable in the first film by riding on the back of otherworldly performances from Streep, Tucci and Blunt. In the second film, Hathaway’s given far too much screentime.
The consistent bright spot in both films is Tucci’s Nigel, and that’s because he’s almost flawless again. He’s given the perfect amount of screentime; it’s mind-blowing how he hasn’t delivered a bad performance in nearly three decades (despite being in some fairly awful movies).
The film’s core thematic examination of print journalism in the modern media age is interesting. The 19-year gap between the first and second movies gives the film plenty of room to explore change, but its exploration feels stupidly heavy-handed. From Sachs yelling, “journalism still matters” into a microphone after she gets laid off, to the farcical billionaire Benji Barnes (Justin Theroux) purchasing the magazine and proposing to turn it into an entirely artificial intelligence-led publication. The idea is remarkably (and unfortunately) relevant, but its execution is far from subtle.
Journalism-first movies are usually a slam dunk for me, but the awful screenwriting and bland direction are fatal.
“The Devil Wears Prada 2” should never have been made. The first film wasn’t close to offering a sequel; Frankel and McKenna don’t have the talent to sustain success in this narrative, and the characters aren’t built to withstand extensive examination. Its ideas aren’t bad, but it doesn’t know how to handle them. Its performances are good (besides Hathaway), but the characters aren’t written well enough to support them.
It’s a disappointing film, but not a surprising one.
