A day after writer-director Mahesh Narayanan’s Patriot, starring Mammootty and Mohanlal, delivered an action adventure around a sort of spyware that allows remote access to personal phones and laptops, the line between fiction and reality momentarily blurred.
How did this happen? Instead of being the outsider who can tell beauty spots from warts, part two is the blinkered insider, unable now to critique the industry in which it is set.
On May 2, the Indian government tested its new Cell Broadcast Alert System, which aims to alert citizens to emergencies. The idea is commendable, but if your phone received the alert, it was also a reminder that a remote entity already can wrest control of a personal device.
As Patriot unfolded, meanwhile, it somehow managed to be both increasingly outlandish and predictable. Narayanan counterbalances the silliness of his plot with details that recall real-life controversies such as the use of Pegasus spyware in India. It is these finely honed details that help hold the film together as the plot itself becomes more illogical.
In The Devil Wears Prada 2, the opposite occurs. The film’s few intelligent strands are quickly overwhelmed by a script so dull, even actors as brilliant as Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway, Emily Blunt, Stanley Tucci and Kenneth Branagh can’t redeem it.
The film seems to be aware of this. Why else would one of the first shots be of a sign that reads “Florals, Spring”, recalling the withering sarcasm of magazine editor Miranda Priestly (Streep) in the first film?
The Devil Wears Prada (2006) was based loosely on Lauren Weisberger’s 2003 novel of the same name, and remains one of the best films about the fashion and luxury media. Back in the Aughts, Vogue was a force to be reckoned with. Its editor-in-chief Anna Wintour made even the most expertly crafted heels wobble with nervousness. Making that first movie wasn’t easy. Weisberger had been Wintour’s personal assistant for 10 months in 1999-2000. Only a handful of fashion insiders were willing to risk Wintour’s disapproval by being associated with a film about toxic work culture in a magazine that resembled Vogue.
Twenty years on, the sequel’s blitzkrieg of a promotional campaign has included videos featuring Streep as Priestly and Wintour posing and chatting together.
Perhaps that’s because the second film has become what the first film critiqued.
Instead of being the outsider who can tell beauty spots from warts, The Devil Wears Prada 2 is the blinkered insider, propped up by a bevy of lucrative collaborations that make it all but impossible for the film to critique the industry in which it is set.
“Sequels are never as good as the originals, and anyway it’s a chick flick. It’s not supposed to be deep,” a friend said to me, after watching part two. I disagree. Director David Frankel and writer Aline Brosh McKenna wove critique and wish-fulfilment together exquisitely in the first film; there’s no reason they shouldn’t have been able to do it again.
Instead, the sequel lacks the kind of insight represented by Priestly’s Cerulean Sweater monologue. It is sorely lacking in spectacle. Despite all the product placement, there isn’t a garment or frame in The Devil Wears Prada 2 that feels iconic or memorable. Instead, we get forgettable cameos from Donatella Versace, Marc Jacobs and Lady Gaga (among others).
There are those who argue that The Devil Wears Prada 2 does have a plotline of depth: the challenges faced by the magazine industry today. But all the film offers are superficial glimpses of these problems too. Instead of digging deeper, it repeatedly appears to suggest that lifestyle journalism may best survive as the plaything of billionaires. And that magazines themselves may endure not as tastemakers or pillars of culture, but as an indulgence.
One could argue that this is a hat tip to realism. Given that the same talented team made the original, however, I had hoped The Devil Wears Prada 2 might use its imagination better. As Priestly would have put it, “That’s all.”
(Write to Deepanjana Pal @dpanjana on Instagram. The views expressed are personal)
