All right, everyone. Gird your loins!
The reviews for The Devil Wears Prada 2 have debuted online with critics rendering their verdicts on the sequel that fans of the 2006 comedy starring Anne Hathaway, Meryl Streep, Emily Blunt, and Stanley Tucci have waited 20 years for.
And early word is not bad!
The first wave of reviews has resulted in a decent 76% on Rotten Tomatoes and 61 “generally favorable” score on Metacritic. But if you’re looking for a more couture rundown of what the critics say about The Devil Wears Prada 2, keep reading.
The Good
Near the top of most reviews, there’s an addressing of the question that nearly all sequels face in an era of money-hungry movie studios: Was this really necessary? Thankfully, writers Aline Brosh McKenna and Lauren Weisberger have found a way to continue the story of Andy, Miranda, and Runway that justifies the follow-up’s existence in 2026.
“Ahead of watching the sequel, I worried about what I thought would be a lazy parade of fan service,” writes David Sims in The Atlantic. “I feared that the movie would lob catchphrases and cameos at the audience like dead fish to a herd of clapping seals. (This often seems to be Hollywood’s view of its customer base too.) At first, the story is a bit of a retread: 20 years later, Runway still exists, and Miranda still rules it with a relatively iron fist. But the magazine’s budgets are no longer limitless, the September issue is not quite as thick with glossy ads, and dreaded words such as content and traffic are bandied about during meetings that used to be focused on which passed appetizers would be served at an upcoming gala. The sequel thus finds a good reason to exist: It has plenty of breezy fun probing the dilemmas of modern media, without abandoning the glitz that made the original so enduring.”
Even with the refocused view of the media landscape for the present moment, The Devil Wears Prada 2 centers its characters, grounding them in their industry’s new realities.
“These films are actually pretty good at poking (gently) at our many hypocrisies,” writes Bilge Ebiri for Vulture. “The first Devil Wears Prada gave us a distinctly American portrait of labor, one in which a horrible boss was merely a catalyst for our self-actualization; Miranda’s judgmental, demeaning attitude ultimately helped Andy become the best version of herself. Miranda lies at the heart of the new film’s unease as well. This time, she’s less a horrible boss and more a desperate one — calm and collected on the surface, but secretly panicking about the declining fortunes of publishing and of her own place in it. That’s not a bad idea for an expansion of the character, and Streep, who despite a recent run of less-than-impressive parts remains one of our greatest actors, is certainly the right person for the job: She can give Miranda that frisson of fragility without necessarily softening her edges.”
Bringing those characters to life is a cast that seems somehow even more stacked than it was back in 2006.
“Streep, as ever, is viciously funny in the role,” writes Kate Erbland for IndieWire. “Hathaway too is able to slip right back into Andy Sachs. A little bit older, a little bit wiser, and still believably swayed by what she thinks is right (with bonus cute fashion). If the real draw of the film is getting its central duo back in the same room, well, it’s kind of hard to argue with that appeal. Far worse sequels have been made for far weaker reasons.”
The Mixed
Not everyone is head-over-high-heels for the sequels, however. Some critics found the follow-up more of a knock-off than a revitalized vintage piece.
“It’s a sequel made with intelligence and respect for both its predecessor and the legions who still love it, so much so that it functions less as a follow-up than as a kind of tribute act, albeit one featuring all the original talent — picking out the comic and dramatic highs from the first film and faithfully replaying them with the same moves and cadences,” writes Guy Lodge in Variety. “But it is, by almost any metric, a lesser movie: narratively, emotionally and cinematically flatter, buoyed by game performances that nonetheless steadfastly fail to surprise. And in almost every way that it falls short, it illustrates something that’s been taken from mainstream Hollywood moviemaking since 2006.”
In The Hollywood Reporter, David Rooney praises the performances of Streep, Tucci, and Blunt (“in delicious form”), noting “the movie is best when it sticks to fluffy, fun nostalgia rather than shooting for substance.”
The Meh
RogerEbert.com‘s Tomris Laffly finds Miranda’s put-downs “feel underbaked here and land like afterthoughts of a script trying to piece together a new story while winking at the old one. … This edition feels like a disjointed collection of serviceable yet forgettable scenes.”
“Yes, it is indeed a pleasure to hang out with these characters again, and there are a few good laughs here and there,” writes Randy Myers in a two-star review in the San Jose Mercury News. “But The Devil Wears Prada 2 feels like it came off the rack before it was ready. It feels about as groundbreaking as florals in spring.
