The sequel arrives twenty years on with the same director, the same writer and all four leads. It takes a while to get going, and the first act leans on how much you already care about these people. Stay with it, because the last half hour has real feeling in it, and Emily Charlton (Emily Blunt) is giving the best performance in the film.
Twenty years later, Runway is losing
The glamour has been turned down deliberately. Print is collapsing, a fast-fashion scandal has wrecked the magazine's credibility, and Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep) is working from the weakest position of her career. What she wants is to be made head of content, and the scandal sits directly between her and that job. So Andy Sachs (Anne Hathaway), freshly laid off from her newspaper, is brought back in to help repair the damage, which is how a woman who walked out of Runway ends up walking back into it. Influencers, digital money and AI are all part of the churn, and there is one good argument buried in there: a machine can write the piece and cut the pattern, but it cannot manufacture the conversation that happens afterwards.
The film is unusually quiet, too, with almost no score until the final stretch, when a Lady Gaga number over a runway walk finally gives it some lift.
Who's who at Runway now
Miranda still runs the magazine, answering now to a chairman's son and a team of consultants. Andy is back as a features editor. Emily left years ago and controls the luxury-group advertising money Runway needs. Nigel Kipling (Stanley Tucci) works the edges, Amari (Simone Ashley) is Miranda's first assistant, and Lady Gaga turns up as a pop star with her own history with Miranda.
Do not go in expecting a clean role reversal. The film is far more interested in what these women still want from one another than in flipping the hierarchy.
Three women, one job, three stages
The best idea here is inheritance. Miranda holds back praise because that is what the work made of her. Emily carried the same hardness out of the building when she left. Andy took the ambition, and the film is quietly honest about what that has cost her.
Nobody here says the kind thing out loud, which is where most of the friction between Miranda and Andy comes from. Andy spends the film trying to be useful to a woman who will not admit she is being useful, and that push and pull is more interesting than the business plot beside it.
The best ten seconds in the film
They belong to Blunt. Somebody finally gets under Emily's guard, and she plays the whole thing in her face, no big gestures, barely a movement. The hurt closes over, she puts her public self back on, and leaves the room. It explains the entire character.
Streep is excellent, playing a different Miranda rather than a smaller one, and she is funniest when refusing to grant anyone the dignity of their own name. Tucci is warm and protective and lands every small line he is handed, including a flat, perfect "no" after telling Andy she looks like a nervous cat.
Hathaway is on good form too. Whatever crisis Andy walks into gets solved before the scene is over, usually by her, which is the exact engine that powers Emily in Paris. It makes her something like the Emily of Runway, and Hathaway plays the eagerness straight enough that the joke lands warmly rather than at her expense.
The costumes are the one place it falls short of expectation. Only Blunt's wardrobe is consistently right, with Amari close behind, which is a surprise in this series of all series. It does land one lovely callback, though, and it is a cerulean sweater.
Three out of five, GLOWING. One outstanding performance, one outstanding scene, an ending that lands, and enough good jokes to carry a slow first act. It is streaming now, so it costs you an evening rather than a trip out, and for anyone who loves the original that is an easy yes.
Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep) was never the one who needed saving. The frailty in the first act is a performance. She knew exactly who Andy Sachs (Anne Hathaway) was, saw the potential years ago, and never stopped seeing it.
The vendor line. In the confrontation scene, Miranda reduces Emily Charlton (Emily Blunt) to a vendor, and it is the only moment anyone gets past her guard. Blunt plays it almost entirely in the eyes.
The book. Miranda tells Andy what her book advance is worth, and that is the moment the penny drops. The rescue mission was never a rescue mission.
Nigel Kipling (Stanley Tucci) set it up. The late reveal is that he engineered Andy landing back at Runway, which recasts the fairy-godmother role as a man quietly working on her behalf and never mentioning it.
The withholding. Andy hovers outside Miranda's office waiting to be praised for an article she is proud of, and Miranda pointedly looks anywhere else. She rated the work. She was never going to say so.
Frozen eggs. One passing line about Andy's private life does more than any speech in the film, and it lands hardest read against Miranda's own record.
Cerulean. The sweater callback lands in the closing stretch, which is why the body mentions it without saying when.
The coat. The most famous gesture in the original returns as an HR complaint, which is either the sharpest idea in the film or the easiest, depending on your mood.
Bright Bulbs
- Emily Charlton (Emily Blunt) takes the film on stillness alone, and gets its single best scene.
- Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep) is still at her funniest refusing to grant anyone the dignity of their own name.
- Nigel Kipling (Stanley Tucci) is protective, warm, and carries most of the best small jokes.
- Andy Sachs (Anne Hathaway) is better than she was in 2006, and still unusually good in this register.
Dull Bulbs
- Nigel's big speech, which the film builds towards and then moves past before it has a chance to land.
- The late reveal about how Andy ended up back at Runway. A lovely idea that asks a fair amount of your belief.
- Miranda's husband (Kenneth Branagh), who gets about two minutes in a film otherwise interested in what the job costs.
Shattered Bulbs
- The first forty-five minutes take a long time to find their footing.
- The role reversal stays half-finished, since the leverage is temporary and the balance settles back near where it began.
- The costume work only consistently lands for one character, in a series known for exactly this.
- The consultants circling Runway are written too broadly for the corporate threat to feel real.
- Almost no score until the final act, which leaves long stretches feeling flat.
Cast
- Meryl Streep as Miranda Priestly
- Anne Hathaway as Andy Sachs
- Emily Blunt as Emily Charlton
- Stanley Tucci as Nigel Kipling
- Lady Gaga as Herself
- Simone Ashley as Amari
- Lucy Liu as Sasha Barnes
- Justin Theroux as Benji Barnes
- Kenneth Branagh as Miranda's husband
- B.J. Novak as Jay Ravitz
- Helen J. Shen as Jin
- Caleb Hearon as Charlie
- Tibor Feldman as Irv Ravitz
- Tracie Thoms as Lily