The Devil Wears Prada 2 Review: Sequel Disappoints

by Natasha JokicBuzzFeedBuzzFeed StaffI'm a Senior Staff Writer at BuzzFeed covering pop culture, entertainment, and politics.

Note: This post is an Op-Ed and shares the author's personal views.

Look, I originally didn't even want to watch The Devil Wears Prada 2.

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I have a deeply parasocial relationship with the first movie. Like Andy, I moved to New York to become a journalist, and I also found myself (very briefly) subbing in as the assistant to an editor-in-chief of a women's magazine. One day, I was sitting at my desk when I found out that a friend of mine had been diagnosed with cancer. I only let myself tear up once I was out of the office building, delivering a garment bag, with lines from Stanley Tucci's Nigel circling in my head. It might not be a perfect movie, but it's one of my favorites.

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But, beyond the particulars of my life, I believe that the reason the original movie has had such staying power over the years is that it is fundamentally about the sacrifices women must make to be great in a system that is cruel, capitalistic, and patriarchal.

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On the other hand, The Devil Wears Prada 2 is a bad movie about a fashion magazine.

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To start with, the dialogue is shallow, obvious, and repetitive, like a made-for-streaming project that constantly repeats its plot back to its phone-addicted viewer. Beat for beat, the first movie is retread with none of the tension or bite. There felt something caustic about the first film; fashion houses notably refused to work with it because they were so afraid of Anna Wintour. Now, clad in Dior and paired with Diet Coke product placement, the second movie is here to tell you that the old ways are great, actually.

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To be clear, it feels like there are no real stakes in this movie. This is almost an incredible feat, given the abundance of source material in the real publishing world in 2026. The opening is too rushed to make any of Andy’s motivations feel desperate or especially plausible. She laments how execs are paid in millions while writers are laid off, a comment that goes nowhere. Every character has too much money, which wouldn't inherently be terrible (see: Succession) if they weren't a surface-level version of their former selves. Like, oh, gasp, Miranda has to fly economy. Won't someone think of the children!

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There's a girl-boss version of what happened at the Washington Post that's supposed to be...a good thing?

Let's talk about Miranda. Remember how she only ever — allegedly — smiled once? This Miranda has none of the terror and twice the emotion, which could only have worked if it felt even vaguely earned, which it does not. This movie has managed to take one of the great, complex villains of cinema and has instead framed her to look short. She's now a decade late for the HR-approved language in the office conversation, a recurring bit that lacks any bite and already feels hopelessly dated.

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As for the new characters, Simone Ashley is wasted as a redux of Emily's character. The romantic subplot manages to be infinitely more pointless than the one in the first movie. There's an endless barrage of cameos, which serve no purpose beyond making us go, "Oh, that guy." Why should I care that Jon Batiste is in a scene as himself? Not a single one manages to pull half as much weight as the Harry Potter subplot in the first movie, and J.K. Rowling wasn't even on screen for that.

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And thank god she wasn't!

If you want a movie with great clothes and constant throwbacks to the original, you will be pleased. But if you dared hope for a movie that might say something slightly insightful, you will wish you had walked out halfway through.

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What did you make of the movie? LMK in the comments.

Letterboxd / Via letterboxd.com

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