The Devil wears prada 2

June 12 – 18

Fri June 12 – 3:30 & 7:00 pm
Sat June 13 – 7:00 pm
Sun June 14 – 1:30 & 7:00 pm
Mon June 15– 7:00 pm
Tues June 16 – 7:00 pm
Wed June 17 – 3:30 pm
Thurs June 18 – 1:30 pm & 7 pm – LAST SHOW

Rated PG – 1hr 57min
Comedy / Drama

Twenty years after making their iconic turns as Miranda, Andy, Emily and Nigel–Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway, Emily Blunt and Stanley Tucci return to the fashionable streets of New York City and the sleek offices of Runway Magazine in 20th Century Studios’ The Devil Wears Prada 2, the eagerly awaited sequel to the 2006 phenomenon that defined a generation.

If you go into The Devil Wears Prada 2 looking for fierce fashion porn, bitchy put-downs and a fresh dose of Meryl Streep’s iconic performance as imperious Anna Wintour clone Miranda Priestly, you are unlikely to be disappointed. Arriving 20 years after the original, David Frankel’s sequel hits familiar beats that fans will eat up and deftly reconfigures the core trio of women into new adversarial positions, even if it ultimately lapses into cozy sentimentality. The movie is best when it sticks to fluffy, fun nostalgia rather than shooting for substance.

In the intervening years since we last saw her, Andy has been toiling as a Serious Journalist at a Hard-Hitting News Outlet called The Vanguard. But just as she’s announced as the winner of a journalism award at a fancy dinner, her phone and those of all her colleagues at the table light up with texts informing them that the publication is folding and their employment terminated.

There are some amusing updates on what Miranda can get away with. Her coat and handbag are no longer hurled on assistants’ desks since an HR complaint. And her hyper-competent first assistant Amari (Simone Ashley) discreetly shuts her down when she risks saying anything culturally insensitive. Not that such concerns take the sting out of her haughty disdain, which Streep reliably delivers with supreme poise and acid tongue.

The same could be said for Runway’s longtime art director Nigel Kipling (Stanley Tucci), though a tart sweetness — even a whisper of camaraderie — cushions his barbs. He’s Miranda’s confidant but not her imitator. Tucci is the movie’s other MVP and gets many of McKenna’s best lines. Brilliant at his job, Nigel once again is the story’s “magical gay,” whisking the wardrobe-deficient Andy into the photoshoot fashion closet and kitting her out with thousands of bucks’ worth of swoon-worthy designer apparel.

Costume designer Molly Rogers, meanwhile, replicates the first film’s ethos of bland but easily marketable looks, with plenty of corsets worn over crisp, white shirts and a T-bar necklace permanently around Andy’s neck. To the film’s credit, there’s also real style tucked into the periphery, as characters breeze past Richard Quinn florals and Lady Gaga, still in her Tim Burton demon era, performs on a runway of models in loose, patterned Seventies gowns and oversized hats. It’s a compromise. But, then, that’s what The Devil Wears Prada 2 has turned out to be all about – it’s artistry snuck in beneath the commerce.