Film Hedonist

In 2006, The Devil Wears Prada inspired a whole generation of girls and boys, quite unironically, to girlboss their way up the career ladder as if it led straight to heaven.

Twenty years later, the essays titled “Who’s the real villain?” and “Should we feel sorry for Miranda Priestly?” have gathered dust, and the Hollywood assembly line has generously handed us a sequel nobody asked for and nobody was waiting for.

It’s a sequel only on paper (twenty years have passed, after all). At its core, it’s a copy of the original without the originality: a smoothed-out, desaturated photocopy. It dances on the bones of our nostalgia for the carefree 2000s and reminds us that the past is past and can’t be brought back.

Andy Sachs returns to Runway. Andy Sachs once again has to prove she deserves the job. Andy Sachs once again tries to thaw her boss’s icy heart (and her boss’s position is, once again, under threat).

This Sisyphean labour plays out between mass-produced filler shots of models, stylists and designers, playing themselves, who add nothing to the film and never move the story forward.

This overcooked steak might have gone down a little easier with decent humour or beautiful images. But the humour is missing. The first film’s jokes come back as tired reruns, and not one minute of this one raised even a faint smile. And the fashion, in a film about a fashion magazine, has faded into the background, barely visible behind dreary grey colour grading.

Leaning hard on working-class sympathy, the film keeps trying to say something about modern capitalism, where art is crushed for the sake of monetisation and profit. It even brings in clumsy stand-ins for Jeff Bezos and his ex-wife, and plays with the gossip about Bezos buying Vogue for his new wife.

But how can we believe these crocodile tears when the film is itself a product of everything it laments?

In 2026, listening to the characters agonise over taking Uber Comfort instead of Uber Black while they plan a dinner under frescoes in Italy is torture: by boredom, and by a total lack of self-awareness.

Stanley Tucci and Lady Gaga, the film’s only real assets, are badly underserved by the script and underused in the runtime. Their scenes made me think about how good this could have been if the writers had brought a little more imagination and effort.

The film casts a line toward its most interesting question but never reels it in: what happens when a tyrannical leader reaches the end of her reign, losing influence and relevance, with her legacy behind her and, in front of her, people who finally have something to say back, and not the kindest words?

That never happens.

This devil doesn’t wear Prada. This devil wears skin-smoothing filters and ChatGPT creativity. This devil was ordered on Temu and deserves to be forgotten on a top shelf.

This devil is a good lesson that the past belongs in the past.

It’s time to write new stories.