Review: The Devil Wears Prada – A Staple of 2000s Hollywood. (Spoilers)

Last week, I watched The Devil Wears Prada for the first time and all I could think as I watched it was – did we really need a sequel to this? It’s good, but it can stand on its own.

The Devil Wears Prada follows Andrea (Andy) Sax, a bright-eyed college graduate who’s desperately looking for a job. She interviews with “Runway”, a high-end fashion magazine out of desperation, and is hired by Miranda Priestly, the demanding editor-in-chief. She becomes one of Miranda’s assistants and quickly grows to be a part of the company, embracing its fashion culture. However, trouble strikes as her position as Miranda’s assistant and her new connections in the fashion and media world put a heavy strain on her relationships, until she finally has to ask herself if it’s worth it anymore.

Being a movie centering heavily around the fashion industry, The Devil Wears Prada makes a lot of jokes about people’s weight. Being set in the early 2000s when the beauty standard was heroin chic, glorifying unhealthily skinny bodies that were slightly better than today’s Ozempic-using actresses, jokes are made about Andy being fat because she’s a size six. One of the funniest and saddest scenes in the movie is when Andy has to tell her friend, Emily, that she’s going to Paris, and Emily yells that Andy doesn’t deserve to go to Paris since she eats carbs. The culture of extreme dieting to stay skinny is fully embraced and ridiculed in this movie.

Moreover, the movie didn’t shy away from addressing the issues that come from being a corporate woman. Miranda, though an unlikeable character, is sympathetic. As the editor-in-chief, she spent her life climbing the corporate ladder to the detriment of two marriages and her daughters’ childhoods. She feels bad for not being there for her husband and children thanks to her extreme dedication to “Runway.” On top of that, she has to make hard decisions to maintain her place at the company to the detriment of her relationships with her staff.

Similarly, Andy is pushed by Miranda to climb the corporate ladder by throwing people under the bus for her benefit. While Andy doesn’t realize it at first, towards the end of the movie she does. Already seeing what such a lifestyle has done to Miranda and what it’s already doing to her life, she leaves “Runway” and grows confident in her own skin, reuniting with her boyfriend and getting a job with a local newspaper.

Because of this, I really doubt that the new Devil Wears Prada movie is going to be good. The first movie was clearly meant to be a standalone film. It starts with Andy being desperate for a job and ends with her being confident enough to move on to do her own thing. It doesn’t shy away from criticizing corporate culture and makes jabs at an industry that’s particularly known for its toxicity, something it could do back in the 2000s. It’s a good movie that doesn’t need a sequel.

Until next time,

M.J.