'The Devil Wears Prada 2' Is About the Death of Journalism

My favorite thing about The Devil Wears Prada 2 — a mostly successful sequel to the 2006 original — is all of its contradictions. It’s about Andy Sachs (Anne Hathaway), who rejected the ethos of glossy fashion magazine culture in 2006 to return to real journalism. In 2026, when the movie opens, Andy has been fired from her job in real journalism (I had no idea how spot-on I was in my assessment of her career in my Simon Baker piece) and returns to Runway Magazine for what she hopes will be a temporary lifeline while she searches for another foothold in a dying industry.

Instead, Andy ends up endeavoring to save Runway from a billionaire tech vulture trying to buy it from a different billionaire who wants to lay off most of the staff — and she does it by recruiting yet another billionaire, one virtuous enough to let Miranda Priestly continue running the magazine exactly the way Andy Sachs ran away from in 2006. And the real irony is that this IP sequel — about hanging on to old traditions and the evils of billionaires and corporate consolidation — was produced by 20th Century Studios, which was bought by Disney, which then stripped 20th Century for its spare IP parts. Like, say, The Devil Wears Prada.

And Lady Gaga makes a cameo.

I loved it, because it’s actually a complicated portrait of the current state of both the fashion and journalism industries. It’s not about avoiding selling out. It’s about selling out to the least objectionable billionaire. The entire second act is devoted to Andy trying to find the line between good journalism and articles that readers will actually click on — and when she takes the gig at Runway, she’s lauded by culture critics but can’t gain any real traction until she lands an interview with a billionaire who spills some genuinely juicy tea.

It’s so real. The only quibble is this: instead of being gutted by an AI algorithm, Runway at one point is being operated by a team of management consultants. I honestly don’t know which is worse. AI slop or soulless management consultants. It’s a genuine philosophical puzzle.

Oh, and yes: Meryl Streep is very good, and her character remains mostly consistent — though even the Devil has an occasional soft spot. Stanley Tucci is phenomenal. They find a way to successfully work in Emily Blunt’s character — she’s the girlfriend of one of the billionaire vultures, a Lauren Sánchez Bezos type dating a Jeff Bezos type, which is to say: a complete and total dork (played by Justin Theroux) who believes that money can buy him coolness. It cannot. And Anne Hathaway’s Andy Sachs somehow gets to remain the moral center of an IP sequel by basically selling her soul to the Devil because … the Devil you know is better than the billionaire you don’t?

I just wish that a little of the $215 million the film made worldwide over the weekend could be funneled back into the very industry the movie spends its entire runtime mourning.