The Devil Wears Prada... 20 Years Later 

With the sequel releasing this weekend, I realized it’s been far too long since I last saw The Devil Wears Prada (2006) and I decided to change that. I’ve seen this movie a few times because it’s my older sister’s favorite movies of all time. It’s probably the reason why she moved to New York City. And, honestly, it’s hard not to see why. This movie is really good.

The Devil Wears Prada has everything right going for it. The two leads, Anne Hathaway and Meryl Streep, are perfect as Andy Sachs and Miranda Priestly. There’s a great supporting cast including Stanley Tucci as Nigel and Emily Blunt as Emily. The soundtrack is fun and has some great early aughts music. The camera work and editing are engaging and for the first time in a while I didn’t touch my phone while watching a movie at home. Everything about this movie is well crafted and gorgeous to look at. I mean it helps that they work at a fashion magazine. They get to basically play dress up with their costuming.

The story itself is extremely tight and wastes no time setting up the central conflict and character beats. Within minutes of starting, we’re greeted to “Suddenly I See” by KT Turnstall playing over a montage of Andy Sachs getting ready and arriving at her new job as an assistant to the editor-in-chief of Runway (a substitute for Vogue). Then our central antagonist is introduced and a montage follows as the office prepares for Miranda Priestly’s intimidating arrival.

Meryl Streep as Miranda is the best part of this movie. The character is a fictionalized version of longtime editor-in-chief of Vogue Magazine, Anna Wintour. The original novel was written by a former assistant of Wintour who in real life quit after less than a year due to the stress and abuse endured. Streep in the film is cold, demanding, soft-spoken, hardworking, and cultivates a cult like loyalty in her employees. At points we are invited to sympathize with her, as Andy says in defense of the abuse, “But if she was a man, no one would notice anything about her except for how great she is at her job.” Streep’s acting is some of her best and has some iconic lines of dialogue including a speech about a cerulean blue sweater and “Florals? For Spring? How groundbreaking.”

As good as this movie is it’s also jarring to watch today. Most of the “jokes” in this movie are Andy Sachs’ coworkers telling her she’s ugly and overweight. Stanley Tucci’s character Nigel serves as a mentor character to Andy and he’s just as mean-spirited to her as Miranda. I kinda hated him in this movie. Emily Blunt’s character constantly demeans Andy, while making references to her own eating disorder, “I'm on this new diet. Well, I don't eat anything and when I feel like I'm about to faint I eat a cube of cheese.” Andy’s character arc in this movie doesn’t even rebuke these statements. She loses weight at their suggestions. She’s still dressing in high fashion even after quitting her job.

Sometimes I thought this was satire of the fashion industry, but overall the movie is reverent to the industry. We’re told that fashion is an art form and that the designers who dress models influence all of us shopping retail. But at the same time, they’re giving people eating disorders and shaming them if they’re not thin enough. The movie is not interested in reconciling an art form with the predatory industry surrounding it. While I don’t think every film needs to have a strong moral, this story doesn’t really know what it wants to accomplish.

This movie is peak 2006 and in some ways its super nostalgic and fun. The camera work and color grading stand in contrast to the Netflix rom-coms that get pumped out every year. Despite the jokes, the overall writing is really good. New York City looks gorgeous in this movie, and there’s an early 2000s optimism in this movie that if you work hard enough you can get ahead. It’s fun seeing Andy run around with a Starbucks order because Starbucks product placement was everywhere in the early aughts. Also, Miranda gives Andy an impossible task of getting the unreleased manuscript of the seventh Harry Potter book… As fun as this was, it’s reminded me just how much pop culture has changed in 20 years.

I feel like I should mention Andy’s boyfriend, Nate (Adrian Grenier). Following release of the movie, there was a trend of blog posts that Nate was the real villain of the movie. The premise for Andy working for Miranda is that she needs to work this job to get connections for a better job in journalism. So, if he’s not supportive of her doing this, then he’s not supportive of her career. Except in the few scenes we get of them together, he is concerned that she’s overworking herself and is changing into someone that she doesn’t like. He doesn’t yell. He sulks a little, but that’s after she misses his birthday. Andy’s other friends are one dimensional. When they complain about her working schedule, we kinda sympathize with Andy because we simply don’t care about them. Even though the characters react like Andy has changed, we don’t get a great picture of that change and how it affects her life outside of work. The movie glamorizes working at Runway so much that we forget that Andy wanted to be a journalist. This isn’t the job for her. She has little time to write outside of work.

It’s significant to have Nate work as a chef, another job that has long hours and a demanding physical toll on him. And, using context clues, Andy is dieting off screen in this movie and later reveals that she’s dropped a size… she’s probably stopped eating what her chef boyfriend is making. I mean that’s gotta hurt. As much as I want to defend Nate, he’s honestly barely in the film. This story is about the relationship between Andy and Miranda.

I didn’t bring up all the dated references and jokes that haven’t aged well to shame people into not liking this movie. The Devil Wears Prada is really well crafted. It’s so much fun to watch and a perfect movie for the Sunday Scaries. It’s dated because we’ve moved on and that’s definitely for the better. I thought watching this movie would make me excited for the sequel… and I couldn’t be more wrong. I don’t know how they could possibly make a sequel work. Maybe these characters should stay in 2006.