Gird your loins: Critics react to The Devil Wears Prada 2
By Lauren Del Fabbro, Press Association Entertainment Reporter
The highly anticipated sequel to the hit noughties fashion film, The Devil Wears Prada, has been received well by critics.
Featuring a star-studded cast, including Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway, Stanley Tucci and Emily Blunt – with a cameo from popstar Lady Gaga – the sequel follows on from the 2006 film, which saw ambitious journalist Andy Sachs (Hathaway) take on the role of assistant to the ruthless Runway magazine editor-in-chief, Miranda Priestly (Streep).
Andy returns in the anticipated follow-up blockbuster to work as the features editor for the fictional magazine as Miranda and her close confidante, Nigel Kipling (Tucci), come to terms with a new media landscape.
The trio reconnect with another former assistant, Emily Charlton (Blunt), who is now the head of a luxury brand and holds the keys to commercial money that could ensure Runway’s survival.
The fashion film reunited director David Frankel and screenwriter Aline Brosh McKenna, with its release marking two decades since the original hit the big screens.
The Guardian gave the film three stars, describing it as “fun” and “good-natured”, however, missing a little of the “rom”, calling Andy’s romance with Patrick Brammall’s character “bafflingly dreary and chemistry-free”.
The film fared better for the London Times and the UK's Daily Telegraph, which gave the sequel four stars, with the latter calling it a “glorious, glamorous tribute to the noughties” with “acid wit and unabashed love of luxury and glamour” which makes it feel like it is a “product of an earlier age”.
Meanwhile, The Times describes Streep as “sublime” and that, although the film was not “groundbreaking”, it offered “warmth” with a “feelgood finale”.
The London Independent also gave the sequel four stars, calling a “trenchant, committed portrait of the state of contemporary journalism – only with more gags and great frocks”.
The Devil Wears Prada 2 is out in Ireland on May 1.
