THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA (2006) (C+) - This popular title is more of a cultural touchstone than anything with an authentic cinematic footprint, 20 years on. It is difficult to watch it now (especially for the first time) as anything other than a collection of indelible one-liners and career-defining performances.
Anne Hathaway and Emily Blunt became stars, Meryl Streep conducted a master class in acting, and Stanley Tucci snarked with the smoldering sneer of a runway model. Never mind that the plot is rickety and the movie itself is an unappetizing mix of romantic comedy, social satire and screwball farce. It buys into both patriarchal stereotypes (no matter how plucky Hathaway's Andy Sachs may be) and mindless worship of the world of celebrities and fashion.
It all feels like an era we could never go back to, as well as a contributing factor to the AI/social-media jungle we are suffocating in. It epically fails the Bechdel Test, even if the test applied not only to men but also to clothes (which it should). Streep plays a supreme asshole of a fashion editor (the barely fictional Runway magazine) with the zeal of a cartoon villain, treating everyone in her sight, including the ever-loyal Nigel (Tucci), like battered stray animals. We are supposed to find Miranda's Shakespearean cruelty charming.
Hathaway's narrative arc is intended for us to root for Andy -- a Northwestern grad and aspiring journalist -- as she immediately sells her soul and devotes her talens to being Miranda's slavering assistant. She is mocked not only for her TJ Maxx wardrobe, but also for having bushy eyebrows and being overweight (even though she is, you know, Anne Hathaway). But, like in a Disney fairytale, Nigel kits her out in jaw-dropping fashions, and Andy instantly transforms into a power player and infallible assistant; there is nothing she can't handle as she slowly earns Miranda's grudging respect. Suddenly she has eclipsed Blunt's Emily as Miranda's most-trusted right-hand woman.
Along the way, she will break up with her puppy-dog of a boyfriend (the equally pretty Adrian Grenier) and sleep with a roguish writer (Simon Baker) before her inevitable (and telegraphed) come-to-Jesus moment that challenges her ethical standards and true devotion to journalism. Andy is caught somewhere in the ether between "Sex and the City" and "Girls." Writers Aline Brosh McKenna and Lauren Weisberger capture the patter of newspaper people as well as fashionistas, dropping in cagey one-liners, mostly for Hathaway and Tucci, though Blunt holds her own at times. Director David Frankel leans on sweeping views of Manhattan and Paris, and he never met a needle drop (Madonna's "Vogue" and other obvious choices) or a celebrity cameo (Heidi Klum, Donatella Versace) that he didn't like.
This has the breeziness of a trashy beach novel and a naivete that feels appropriate for the Bush era. There are glimpses of legitimate storytelling -- such as when Miranda drops her guard and allows Andy to see her suffer personally as her marriage hits the rocks. But those are mere glimpses of honest storytelling in this scrapbook of a movie.
THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA 2 (C-minus) - Now that we've established that the world has changed dramatically from 2006, it's abundantly clear we didn't need a sequel, especially one that barely rises above an '80s episode of "Dynasty."
All the principals are back, noticeably older, with Stanley Tucci slipping into an odd Paul Shaffer vocal pattern, his one-liners now forced and flat. Anne Hathaway just can't find the right tone for Andy, wiser now after the demise of her independent journalism outfit and forced to return to Runway, initially to perform damage control for a pesky little problem involving the magazine and story subject employing foreign sweatshop labor.
The ostensible hook here is about the de-evolution of journalism into cheap click-bait, which threatens the future of the magazine. Miranda's job is less authoritarian these days, though she is in line for a promotion to the parent company, run by Irv Ravitz (Tibor Feldman) and his unserious son Jay (B.J. Novak), who looks like he is up to no good. Meantime, Emily has moved on to a big fashion house, and she takes up with a simpleton of a tech billionaire, Benji Barnes (a tone-deaf Justin Theroux), who is in line to take over the parent company and save the magazine from ravenous bean-counters and a staff replaced by AI.
Twists and turns ensue, but the vibe really never rises above the level of soap opera. Director Frankel returns after an uneventful intervening career, and he doesn't have much to offer beyond more montages set to dance-club hits and swooning shots of Manhattan and, this time, Milan. He devotedly conducts fan service with call-backs to the original, one more tired than the next. (The eyebrows!) Andy, who gets an editor title and an office, is saddled with a bland new boyfriend and a cliched Radar O'Reilly-like assistant, neither of whom can move the needle here. Frankel stuffs in even more celebrity cameos (Jon Batiste, Tina Brown). Nothing coheres.
Like the first film, everyone continues to worship at the altar of fashion, with an added dash of lip-service to the grand question of the precarity of journalism. A serious polemic this is not. Rather, it creaks with worshipful adoration of the original, with everyone just going through the motions and collecting that paycheck.
You can see a glimpse of what might have been during a charming coda, in which Andy and Emily seek to make peace and settle back into their familiar snippy banter. It becomes clear that those two are the keys to the overall arc of the story. It's not Andy battling Miranda or Nigel parenting Andy; instead it is a pair of 40-something women who have been chewed up and spit out by the fashion-industrial complex, but remain survivors who no longer have the energy to snipe at each other. Hathaway (less doe-eyed now) and Blunt (with her features sharpened by age) extract a few ounces of emotion as they toe the line between rivalry and camaraderie.
If you find yourself inclined to bail on this mess, at least skip to that final scene. It doesn't rescue the sequel, but it somehow redeems the original movie and its core mission. After nearly two hours of missteps and tepid retread scenes, the hint of an honest film peeks out at its audience, albeit too little too late.
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