Contains spoilers
*****
The cult figure of the 2006 film The Devil Wears Prada was Miranda Priestley (Meryl Streep), shrewd, intelligent, and with an ice block for a heart. Twenty years later, she starts in satisfyingly charmless mode, but melts in stages as her previously unassailable top-dog status is whittled down by financiers and takeovers. At one point, there’s even a hint of a teardrop.
Much has changed in two decades at the Runway fashion house. Print is gone. Digital is king. And with this seismic shift comes changes in the way we all consume news, and the way that journalists and editors fashion and write their text. It’s an obvious point, but it is well made in the opening half hour of Prada 2. Some of the best moments come with the gentle prompting of Miranda’s new HR savvy assistant, guiding her old-school boss away from the pitfalls of workplace bullying and unacceptable language. The formerly scalpel-sharp Priestley put-downs have clearly been targeted by HR employment lawyers. Miranda’s inability to suffer fools now has to make do with eye-rolling gestures of contempt and stunted mutterings delivered by Streep who has the ventriloquist-like ability to speak with barely a flicker from her lips.
Some things, however, do not change. Anne Hathaway, Emily Blunt, Meryl Streep and Stanley Tucci all look slightly older, but talented make-up artists, great fashion, and perhaps some private procedures have disguised the ageing process to enable us to see how beautiful people preserve their most cherished assets.
This is no rom-com. The love interest for Hathaway barely works. Peter (Patrick Brammall) is an awkward afterthought, mostly irrelevant. Much more enjoyable is the love match between Emily (Blunt) and her doting beau Benji (Justin Theroux), vacuous and wealthy in equal measure.
The gut-wrenching career disappointment endured by Nigel (Tucci) in the first film is echoed in Prada 2, but this time it’s Miranda herself who falls prey to the fickleness of fate. Her unlikely heroic helper is, inevitably, Andy (Anne Hathaway). She has initially been recalled to Runway to rescue them from a sweat-shop supplier scandal.
When the big money boys take over Andy plots and schemes her pathway with a hint of steel and a plenteous dollop of her trademark wide-eyed ethical angst. The weakness of the film lies in the contrived denouement, prefaced by plenty of jet-setting, hurried covert meetings and unlikely unions.
Prada 2 has no 'Cerulean sweater' moment, a causically delivered Miranda insight in the original film to the hapless Andy that made us all look differently at the clothes we are wearing. However individual and casual we think our choices are, we have all been fashioned. That speech alone lifted Prada into the 'above average' echelon. Prada 2 lacks that bite.
Nevertheless, it is a warm-hearted film that addresses the unrelenting demise of the magazine industry, but glories in the beauty and glamour of the fashionistas and their spectacular locations. There are the inevitable guest appearances, the best of which, by far, is from the sneering, talented Gaga.
Prada 3 is a distant prospect. It will need a better storyline and some miraculous surgical procedures if it is to stand a chance of success.
On both counts, perhaps AI will provide the solutions.
