As The Devil Wears Prada 2 heads to theatres Friday, CBC’s review finds a glossy sequel built on returning stars, industry anxiety and thin storytelling.
The Devil Wears Prada 2 brings Anne Hathaway and Meryl Streep back into Runway’s orbit this Friday, but CBC’s review describes a glossy return that is more comfort watch than sharp fashion satire.
In a review for CBC News, entertainment reporter and film critic Jackson Weaver calls the revamp of the Oscar-nominated 2006 film “exceedingly superficial,” arguing that it offers the familiar pleasures of the franchise while struggling to match the focus, character growth or cultural bite of the original.
The sequel again follows Hathaway’s Andy Sachs, now an established journalist who is both honoured with another award and pushed out of her newspaper job as the film begins. She returns to Runway, this time as features editor, after the magazine’s reputation is damaged by an exposé tied to a story celebrating a company associated in the film with sweatshop-driven fast fashion.
The new pressure on Runway comes from a media landscape the movie repeatedly frames as hostile to old tastemakers: weakened journalism, online publishing, advertiser demands and the looming prospect of artificial intelligence. Justin Theroux appears as billionaire tech figure Benji Barnes, whose vision of a human-light media future puts him opposite Streep’s Miranda Priestly in one of the sequel’s more pointed industry riffs.
Much of the appeal, according to the review, is still in the returning ensemble. Stanley Tucci is back as Nigel, now lamenting the shrunken resources of an online-first magazine. Emily Blunt’s Emily, no longer Miranda’s assistant, returns as a Dior executive and is singled out by Weaver as the standout of the revisit. The film also leans into fan service, with callbacks to the original’s florals joke, Miranda’s staircase and Andy’s famous cerulean sweater.
But Weaver writes that the sequel often gets those highs by resetting or softening what the first film had already resolved. Andy is drawn back into a familiar dynamic of proving herself to Miranda and seeking Nigel’s approval, while Miranda’s intimidating control is replaced at times by a more tentative version of the character. The review says the film also spends less time making a case for fashion itself, despite being built around one of cinema’s best-known fashion worlds.
The result, in CBC’s assessment, is a movie with sharper clothes, starry cameos and an easy comfort-watch rhythm, but a plot that feels thin and scattered. For fans, the sequel appears to offer a polished reunion. Whether it can become more than a nostalgic return to Runway is the question the review leaves hanging as the film reaches theatres.
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