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“May the bridges I burn light my way.” The Devil Wears Prada 2

4 May 2026

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“You can’t go home again.” A sentiment oft attributed to the author Thomas Wolfe. But dang if Hollywood doesn’t try. We live in a media cacophony of reboots and reinventions, sequels and prequels, all infinitely merchandisable with a sea of product placements and corporate synergies. There is seemingly no IP at this point that cannot be franchised into its own universe of spin-off narratives and monetizations.

Which brings us to The Devil Wears Prada 2. Miranda strikes back. I’m happy to report that in this (rare?) instance Prada 2 is a nostalgic cash grab with something to say. And a raison d’etre. Plus, it’s just a darn good bit of fun, kicking off the summer ’26 blockbuster season in frothy, fizzy fashion (with a neatly nestled poison pill of cultural commentary).

I’m likely the only person who is going to invoke Joker: Folie a Deux in my review here, but like that much-maligned film (I think I’m literally the only person who liked Joker 2 … ah well), Devil Wears Prada 2 presents a deftly redemptive arc, offsetting elements of the original film that haven’t aged terribly well (e.g. body-shaming, rampant careerism, classism, low-key misogyny) with a wry and dare I say winsome self-awareness. It’s a nifty bookend to the original film … and hopefully Disney/20th Century Studios can resist the greedy urge to force a trilogy down our collective throats. Although I suspect that will be an offer the cast and crew can’t refuse.

Returning director David Frankel and screenwriters Aline Brosh McKenna and Lauren Weisberger (author of the original novels on which all of this is based) wisely lean into providing a narrative framework tantamount to cinematic comfort food. All of the story beats burned into the consciousness of viewers who *may* have watched the first installment, say, 918 times are basically there: protagonist in desperate need of job finds herself in shark infested waters to pay the rent; a MacGuffin gauntlet is thrown to test said protagonist’s mettle (unpublished Harry Potter in the first, white whale of a feature interview subject in the second); protagonist starts to squeak into the inner circle; a fabulous European fashion extravaganza yields palace intrigue; the very industry featured throughout the film finds itself in existential peril; a double (triple?) cross puts everything right again; and just when you think all are happy and settled, there is a limousine-set exchange that makes you realize corporate America is a delicious jungle, baby (always has been, always will be). Finis.

How’s that for a spoiler/non-spoiler summation?

The core four from the original film – Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway, Stanley Tucci, and Emily Blunt – are all dynamite (duh), bringing grit and wit, joy and gravitas to material that otherwise would float forgettably into the ether in less capable hands. New adds to the cast – Justin Theroux, Lucy Liu, Kenneth Branagh, Lady Gaga (!?) – have far less to do but make the most of limited screen time, running just shy of becoming a red flag for overstuffed sequelitis (Sex and the City 2 … I’m looking at you).

There are some inevitably clunky moments. Twenty years passing between installments will do that to a franchise. You can practically hear the plot-point gears grinding against one another to justify bringing the old band back together, but once the momentum is established, the whole enterprise feels like a cozily familiar cerulean blue sweater.

But as the world keeps burning, I suppose we all need entertainment that comforts and critiques simultaneously. Some have argued that Miranda Priestly has “lost her edge” in this latest production. I beg to differ. With time and the inevitable repeat viewings, the glitz and the flash of this sequel will retreat, and the film’s incisive assessment of the precarious moment we all find ourselves in culturally will be that much more evident.

We are buffeted by an increasingly fragmented, misleading, manipulative media landscape. Journalism dies a thousand deaths every day. Art and beauty are succumbing to an army of algorithms and ’bots shaping public discourse in spiraling, reductive ways. The authority of singular visionaries helping curate taste and style has been lost in a sea of “influencers.” Devil Wears Prada 2 straps on its Louboutins and runs headlong into this miasma with a hardy “may the bridges I burn light my way.”

Unleash hell, indeed.

P.S. I was in London last month and have been remiss in giving a shout out to the theatre scene there. Sometimes, honestly, I just want to go see something and NOT feel like I have homework to do after. That said, I took in, yes, Devil Wears Prada The Musical at the Dominion Theatre, starring fabulous Vanessa Williams with a score by Sir Elton John. Indeed, it’s yet another reinvention – first a book, then a movie, now a musical – but it’s also damn delightful. Imagine the relentless pep of Legally Blonde the Musical with an arch side of the chilly Teutonic pop of American Psycho the Musical. Rodgers and Hammerstein wept. Hopefully, the show will make its way stateside for you to form your own opinion. That’s all.

P.P.S. Oh, wait. That’s NOT all. I also saw Moulin Rouge the Musical at the Piccadilly Theatre and Disney’s Hercules the Musical at the Drury Lane Theatre. It’s not lost on me now that everything I saw was an adaptation/expansion of a beloved film. I sense a theme! Moulin Rouge is by far the stronger offering, with a louchely immersive theatrical experience and a clever updating to the pop/rock pastiche score that will bring smiles of recognition (and a pang of heartache or two). Hercules is gorgeously staged, and the Supremes-esque gospel Greek chorus deserve their own (better) show. Go for the spectacle, stay for the muses, and try not to think about the hodge-podge book too much. Now THAT’s all.

“No Good Deed Goes Unpunished.” Wicked: For Good

2 December 2025

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Wicked. I read Gregory Maguire’s book thirty years ago and was transformed. In this pre-internet era, the idea of approaching a well-worn tale like The Wizard of Oz (which had always been an obsession of mine) from the “villain’s” perspective was relatively, er, novel. But Maguire had more than a gimmick – he had an incisive message to relay, a takedown of the patriarchy, an attack on racism and classism, a desire to champion the rights of all creatures great and small. I had never read anything like it.

 

A few years later, Stephen Schwartz (another obsession) adapted the novel into a big, brassy Broadway musical. My husband and I would finally see the show in Toronto a few years after its debut, and John fell deeply in love with the score and the narrative around an underdog and a top dog striking an unlikely friendship that changed both of their lives … for good. I enjoyed the show but felt something had been lost. The novel’s thornier edges had all been sanded down and replaced with an equally moving but slightly different message around empowerment in the face of institutional adversity.

 

Twenty years later, director John M. Chu crafted a cinematic hybrid of sorts between novel and stage show to generally positive results. Wicked, Part 1 as it has come to be known felt like a revelation (again), bringing the zip of Schwartz’s score into an overlit landscape that didn’t shy away from Maguire’s cultural critique, while remaining a family-friendly, infinitely merchandisable affair. Chu made the arguably controversial, definitely monetizable decision to break the stage show into two films. Given that the first act of the stage show remained unencumbered from too many specific ties to L. Frank Baum’s Oz books and was thereby free to do a good bit of world-building around the school years of Elphaba and G(a)linda, the first film felt like a complete thought, ending with the triumphant anthem “Defying Gravity.”

 

So what to do with the stage show’s more problematic second act which episodically barrels through key moments in Elphaba’s and Glinda’s adult life, intersecting frequently, sometime elegantly, often cumbersomely with key moments in Dorothy’s overly familiar journey through Oz? On balance, Chu blessedly gives us some breathing room to digest all that is happening. It took me four views of the Broadway show to actually remember and process what the heck transpires in that second act. Offering that second act material more cinematic real estate is both good and bad. In Wicked: For Good, we get far more character moments, enriching the dynamic between the former school chums as they lead their separate yet symbiotic lives. The downside? There’s more time for us to scratch our heads and ask, “Wait, where were Dorothy, the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, the Lion just then?” From a chronological perspective, at times it just feels like that math ain’t mathing.

 

But Chu was damned if he did, damned if he didn’t. If he drastically reworked act two to unravel some of the nonsensical bits, 20 years of Wicked-heads would have revolted. If he changed too little, the more casual audience members (and mean-spirited critics) would declare this second installment a letdown. “It’s just not as much fun as the first one.” Well, duh. Elphaba does still have to become the “Wicked Witch” we all knew and feared as children. Schrodinger’s witch as it were.

 

For the tl;dr crowd, I enjoyed the film. A lot. It took me a week, though, to figure out what if anything I wanted to say about it. So here’s this. Go see it. Be open-minded. Hold space for revelatory turns by both Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo. And remember how disappointed you were with The Empire Strikes Back as a child, but how eventually it became your favorite Star Wars film in adulthood because it dares to be dark … and, well, real. Or as real as fantasy can be. Through a mirror darkly revealing that even in a magical land of escapism there are, in fact, lions, and tigers, and bears. Oh my.

“Why can’t you teach us history instead of harping on the past?” Wicked … the movie (part one)

21 November 2024

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Wicked. An adjective. A thirty year old book by Gregory Maguire. A twenty year old musical by Stephen Schwartz. A present day marketing/merchandising juggernaut by Universal Pictures. And, oddly enough, the post-2024 presidential election escapist allegorical cautionary tale none of us quite realized we would need.

(And here my money would have been on Joker: Folie à Deux to fill that niche.)

As an inversion of L. Frank Baum’s classic The Wizard of Oz (itself a sly critique of populist politics and presidential scandal of its time), Maguire’s source text has always served as a post-feminist, pro-queer indictment of classism, patriarchy, misogyny, and speciesism. A good bit of that got lost in Broadway’s necessary streamlining for a 2.5 hour tune-filled run time. But the DNA of questioning “the man behind the curtain” has always been a constant in every version of this oft told tale. As Jeff Goldblum’s Wizard intones, “Nothing brings people together like a common enemy.” And in this instance, it’s the hat trick of turning an entire population against one woman whose primary “crimes” are difference, compassion, ferocity, and intelligence. Sound familiar?

(I still hope one day the BBC turns the original novel and its subsequent literary sequels into a mini series.)

Director Jon M. Chu made the controversial (to some minds) choice of splitting his film adaptation of the stage musical into two parts. I’m sure doubling the potential box office returns helped sweeten the idea. But it also turns out to be an inspired artistic choice. It feels like the story can breathe a bit more now. The Broadway show is a spectacular spectacle but it’s also a bit of a bombastic freight train with nary a pause from one BIG! number to the next.

Yes, as a Thanksgiving family film offering, there is still plenty of “bigness” – set design that looks like M.C. Escher on an acid trip, costumes that could be an Edith Head x Dr. Seuss collab, CGI that resembles a Chat GPT “Mad Libs.” All to be expected. But the best “special effect” of all? How Chu turns his cinematic gaze to the politics of the personal, giving his A-list cast clear moments of haunting, poignant, or humorous introspection and connection. Expanding her book from the stage show deftly, Winnie Holzman pulls from Maguire’s source text to build out back story, deepen relationships, and bring increased credibility to character developments that the compressed theatrical stagetime glossed over.

Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba, Ariana Grande-Butera as Galinda, and Jonathan Bailey as Fiyero – the show’s/film’s three principal characters – make effective use of the additional airtime. Yes, they all are gifted singers/dancers who sell all the big iconic moments – “The Wizard and I,” “Popular,” and “Dancing Through Life” are respective highlights for this talented trio, honoring their theatrical forebears while adding mucho cinematic surprises and emotional delights.

Yet where the film establishes its heart, gravitas, and, quite frankly, staying power is in the expanded scene work among the trio. They all effectively leverage the relative intimacy of film versus stage to bring grace notes of heartache, insecurity, loneliness, and fear that counterbalance the more day glo elements of the enterprise. I don’t know that audiences will realize the excellent technique and timing these three actors have brought to this production. It will all seem effortless (as it should) but hopefully not taken for granted.

Also, unlike the stage show, the film effectively explores the anti-animal propaganda that propels the Wizard’s rise to power in Oz. (Shades of James Gunn’s last Guardians of the Galaxy.) This is the element from Maguire’s novel that gripped my heart thirty years ago, so I was glad to see it restake bigger, clearer narrative claim. In my opinion, it’s crucial to framing Elphaba’s character arc re: how easy it can be for others to vilify strident empathy. As Galinda flippantly questions her goat history teacher Dr. Dillamond (warmly voiced by Peter Dinklage) before tragedy dramatically opens her heart (and mind): “Why can’t you teach us history instead of harping on the past?”

But just as the expanded run time brings many welcome enhancements, challenges are introduced as well. Notably, signature anthem “Defying Gravity” loses a good bit of its emotional build and thereby payoff, interspersed as it is with a typical Hollywood climax clock tower chase. It still works, in great part due to Erivo’s and Grande’s nuanced delivery, but CGI aerial maneuvers can’t quite compete with the old school theatrical magic of a fab diva belting from a hydraulic lift masked by a football field’s worth of black crepe.

Nonetheless, Wicked, the film … part one, is a marvel, and arguably a movie musical masterpiece, every bit deserving of the success inevitably coming its way. Erivo’s Elphaba wryly observes, “I don’t cause commotions. I am one.” Here’s to that!