As for my then-boss ... well, it wouldn't be politic to say much about that, except that he is also a guy, and not a fashion maven by any stretch. But I got a lot of what Andy was struggling with, and I learned a lot of the lessons she had to learn. It gave a certain kick to my viewing experience. And then, I guess also like Andy, I moved on from the magazine job to other things and eventually ended up as a journalist. Even, if I may say it, an award-winning one; though again not on anything like the level we find Andy working at in the early scenes of this film. I'm still writing for a newspaper, in fact. I haven't been cashiered out. The company I work for did lay off a few folks during some lean times, but most of us are still working. But yeah, I am also acutely aware of the predicament that print media and independent journalism are in. Our industry is changing. It's going digital first and, for some outlets, digital only. The perception that a newspaper career is a thing of the past holds the kind of currency that, when I was catching up with some cousins at a family funeral a couple years ago and I told them what I do, they scoffed: "How do you still have a job?" Screw you very much, guys.
So, in this 20-years-later follow-up to what might be Meryl Streep's most popular role – Runway editor Miranda Priestly – her ex-assistant Andrea comes back, played again by Anne Hathaway. Andy was actually moments away from accepting a major journalism award when she and her entire editorial team got sacked, via text. But Runway isn't faring much better. Now an online-only magazine, it struggles with public credibility. So the publisher brings on Andy as the new features editor in a last-ditch attempt to right the ship. Of course Miranda is as unsupportive as she could possibly be, but Andy gradually proves herself and works her way into her boss's confidence, only to see one new crisis after another emerge as a new owner, and potentially another one after that, threatens everything they have built.
Synopsis aside, it's a fun adventure among the jealousies, snobberies and treacheries of the fashion world. There are plots within plots, and Andy really doesn't earn Miranda's confidence until she hatches one of her own. There are delicious surprises and moments of pure cringe. The deeper Andy gets in the fashion world, the more whatever she wears looks stunning. (Whereas a lot of the high fashion displayed in the movie's magazine shoots actually comes across as ridiculous.) There are some brilliant lines (One of my favorites is "Bridges that I have burned, light my way"). Even after a good 20 years of experience doing serious journalism, Andy still has a lot to learn about figuring out what her job is and how to do it. And the film doesn't fully commit to painting Miranda as the devil; it softens her, or softens toward her, I think even earlier than the first movie did. Nevertheless, Streep still has it, and Hathaway does too.
Stanley Tucci, although noticeably older now, still plays Miranda's faithful doormat, a fashion director who has been passed over for promotion too many times to count and now steers a tricky course between being a warm mentor to Andy and a ruthlessly unsympathetic reality check: "Ah, poor girl! She actually has to work things out for herself!" Emily Blunt is back as another former assistant to Miranda who has gone full Cruella deVil, working in the luxury retail industry. Kenneth Branagh puts in a turn as Miranda's husband. Lucy Liu and Justin Theroux play a super-rich ex-couple – his half being hands-down the most obnoxious person in the movie. B.J. Novak of The Office and Lady Gaga (as herself) are also in it.
Three Scenes That Made It For Me: (1) After Emily makes a catty remark about her eyebrows, Andy looks anxiously in the mirror, then snorts: "They're just eyebrows." (2) The new publisher summons Miranda to a lunch date in the cafeteria, it is suddenly apparent that she didn't even know the building had one; she's never even been on that floor. (3) Miranda is always being restrained by her current executive assistant from saying the kinds of things that H.R. frowns upon these days, but can't help letting little enormities slip out – like the line, in criticism of a story pitched by one of her editorial team, "May my suicide be quick and painless." Then, catching her assistant's hairy eyeball: "What? At least I didn't threaten to kill someone else."
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