DAVID BIANCULLI, HOST:
This is FRESH AIR. "The Devil Wears Prada 2," which opens wide today, is a sequel to the 2006 hit about an idealistic young journalist, played by Anne Hathaway, who becomes the assistant to a scary, dictatorial fashion magazine editor, played by Meryl Streep. Both reprise their roles in this new film, as do Emily Blunt and Stanley Tucci. It finds the magazine world in a vastly different place than it was 20 years ago. Our critic-at-large, John Powers, says the film, if not quite as much a lark as the original, is still good fun and has more to say.
JOHN POWERS, BYLINE: When "The Devil Wears Prada" hit theaters in 2006, I was the film critic at Vogue, the model for Runway, the fashion magazine in the story. The inspiration for Meryl Streep's icy editor, Miranda Priestly, was my own boss, the legendary Anna Wintour. I didn't do a review because, no matter what I said about the movie, which I found slight but entertaining, people wouldn't have trusted. Now comes the long-awaited the "The Devil Wears Prada 2." And I'm free to say that David Frankel's film should delight fans of the first one.
Cleverly written by Aline Brosh McKenna, this fizzy sequel boasts the same expert cast, all as good as you'd hope, not to mention the same ravishing outfits and sumptuous hotel suites. But as the action moves glossily from Manhattan high-rises to New England mansions to Lady Gaga singing in a Milanese museum, it has more on its mind than the original. The story is set 20 years later in the present day.
Anne Hathaway is back as smiley, wholesome Andy Sachs, who's risen from being Miranda's beleaguered assistant to become a prize-winning reporter of hard news stories. Then she gets laid off from her paper. Luckily, there's been a scandal over a foolish article in Runway. And in a damage-control move, the owner hires the respected Andy to be the magazine's features editor. She's back where she started. Only this time she winds up trying to save the publication, she once thought her personal hell.
Like any good sequel, the movie feels like a reunion. The elegant silver-haired Miranda - Streep is impeccable - greets Andy's arrival with trademark imperiousness. Andy's mentor, the art director, Nigel Kipling, is still there, too, to dress her and guide her and, in Stanley Tucci's lovely performance, be quietly touching. Emily Blunt's scheming character, Emily Charlton, who was once Andy's sharp-elbowed rival, has left Runway for a big job at Dior's New York outpost and is romantically involved with Benji Barnes - that's Justin Theroux - a dorky, smug Jeff Bezos figure with a wise, philanthropic ex-wife played by Lucy Liu. Here, early on, Andy, Nigel and Miranda go to the Dior offices. Andy explains her new role to a shocked Emily.
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ANNE HATHAWAY: (As Andy Sachs) I am the new features editor at Runway.
EMILY BLUNT: (As Emily Charlton) No, you're not. Are you serious? Wow. Wonders never cease.
HATHAWAY: (As Andy Sachs) No. I'm actually a journalist now. I've been published in - it doesn't matter. Anyway, we are all well aware that running that story was a mistake and are taking immediate steps.
BLUNT: (As Emily Charlton) I cannot actually get over this. It's really remarkable - a senior editor at Runway. You?
HATHAWAY: (As Andy Sachs) Yep.
MERYL STREEP: (As Miranda Priestly) We're all so thrilled.
POWERS: Now, the first "Devil Wears Prada," with its masterpiece of a title, was a pop fable about wealth and glamour. It had the mythic pull of a hero's journey. Andy travels through Hades - in this case, the fashion world - and faces down the monstrous Miranda, whose unashamed meanness tickled the audience. In fact, the world has changed hugely since the original, and the movie reflects it. This new story is less mythological than historical, less concerned with its heroine's personal journey - Andy's meet-cute romance here is a big yawn - than with what's happening in the larger society, where the digital age has crushed magazines and newspapers.
Back in 2006, Runway, like Vogue, was a juggernaut, with lavish expenditures and a September issue the size of a bank fault. Now with econo budgets and issues as thin as its models, the magazine is struggling to survive. Its major presence is online and ripe for gobbling. The movie accurately depicts how the print world has been falling into the hands of finance thugs, gibberish-spouting consultants and tech moguls, like Benji, who treat publishing as a personal plaything. Driven by algorithms and prophets, none of them actually cares about good journalism.
Andy does, which is why she fights to keep Runway afloat. She knows it's imperfect and often shallow, yet it's still better than the new guys will make it. Plus, she needs the job. As for Miranda, she may be as ruthless as ever, but she's less intimidating than before, and not only because we saw her human side in the first film. She knows how shaky her position is in the new media landscape, where the sophisticated values she represents and institutions she leads are all being washed away in a tsunami of clicks. In "The Devil Wears Prada 2" the devil is not Miranda, but the money man, and they wear Prada, too.
BIANCULLI: John Powers reviewed the "The Devil Wears Prada 2," which opens in theaters today. On Monday's show, Booker Prize-winning novelist Douglas Stuart. Like the main character of his first two novels, Stuart grew up in Glasgow in the 1980s, working-class, queer and with an alcoholic mother. She died when he was a teen. He also went on to have a career in fashion in New York, which plays into his latest novel. I hope you can join us.
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BIANCULLI: FRESH AIR's executive producer is Sam Briger. Our senior producer today is Roberta Shorrock. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham, with additional engineering support by Joyce Lieberman, Julian Herzfeld and and Charlie Cott. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Ann Marie Baldonado, Lauren Krenzel, Therese Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Nyakundi, Anna Bauman and Nico Gonzalez-Wisler. Our digital media producer is Molly Seavy-Nesper. For Terry Gross and Tonya Mosley, I'm David Bianculli. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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