The last 20 years have been good for Andy Sachs (Anne Hathaway). We first met the upstart journalist back in 2006, in David Frankel’s “The Devil Wears Prada,” written by Aline Brosh McKenna, based on the roman à clef by former Anna Wintour assistant Lauren Weisberger. Idealistic and more than a little bit green, young Andy took an unplanned detour into wild world of fashion as the assistant to the powerful editor Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep) at Runway Magazine, and learned a lot of hard life lessons along the way: how to answer phones and style herself, but also how to stand up for what she believes is important, too.

Now, some two decades later, after achieving a lauded career in her dream field, Andy finds herself back at Runway, thanks to market forces dictated by flippant media moguls and their cruel balance sheets. She is different, but so is the world of magazines.

It’s a good thing that “The Devil Wears Prada 2” wants to grapple with the reality of our current media landscape — as a sequel, it actually has something to say. It eclipses the first film, because McKenna and Frankel, both returning, have taken their fun fashion film and given it a deeper meaning for the moment. It’s bigger, better and it resonates with the cultural zeitgeist while maintaining the spirit, style and wit of the original. Like Andy, the sequel is older, and wiser.

Rather than focus on a bunch of new Andys, “The Devil Wears Prada 2” is about what it means to be Andy in her 40s. She’s still spunky and smart, with her own ideas about the way things should be, but she’s much more confident and comfortable in her own skin, thickened after years of experience.

There’s comfort in the continuation of this world, from the same creative team. The entire cast is back, including Streep and Hathaway, as well as Stanley Tucci, as Nigel, Andy’s Runway confidant, and Emily Blunt, as Andy’s former assistant frenemy Emily. Tracie Thoms returns as Andy’s best friend, Lily, as well as Tibor Feldman as Irv Ravitz, Miranda’s boss, the owner of media empire Elias Clark. Thankfully, like Andy, the sequel has also learned some lessons about toxic boyfriends — there’s nary a mention of villainous Nate from the first film.

"Prada 2" opens with dueling crises: Andy has just lost her job at the New York Vanguard while accepting an award for her investigative work; her acceptance speech as cri de coeur for protecting journalism has gone viral. Meanwhile, Miranda has gone viral too, in the bad way, for publishing a piece about a fashion brand since revealed to use sweatshop labor. Irv and his son, Jay (B.J. Novak), land on the bright idea to bring Andy in to give Runway the air of more journalistic integrity, and she jumps at the chance for employment.

The two films are built and structured the same way: Miranda turns up her nose, they lock horns and tussle, but Andy’s tenacity and hard work win eventually. A big, fashion-forward third act European trip — this time in Milan — results in a top-down corporate shake-up that Andy has a hand in, but this time, it’s much bigger scale.

The fate of Runway now in the hands of Elias Clark scion Jay and his team of cutthroat management consultants, Andy, seeking a lifeline, reaches out to Dior honcho Emily and her bizarre tech billionaire biohacker boyfriend Benji Barnes (Justin Theroux). Like every current legacy media outfit, the Runway team is stuck between a rock and a hard place, singing for their supper from either a wealthy heir or an evil tech bro — “The Devil Wears Prada 2” is less fantasy escapism than it is scathing media business satire.

Streep once again unnecessarily proves she’s the best in the business with her performance, delivering more in a single quiet line delivery than most actors can achieve. As Benji mansplains submitting to the onslaught of the future sitting underneath an ancient fresco of "The Last Supper," Streep sighs, “maybe,” the word containing every bit of worry, grief and anxiety that anyone who cares about art made by humans feels right now.

The setting is pointed — these movies are about what’s iconic and persists in culture, and how mainstream consumption is shaped by human beings with taste, that fashion, and magazines, are not frivolous. The sequel argues once again for the magazine traditions of shaping taste, or doing good journalism, and though some might believe these endeavors are the last traces of a dying empire, that doesn’t mean they aren’t worth fighting for. It’s a profoundly moving sentiment, something that you might not expect to find in “The Devil Wears Prada 2,” but this is a film, with a heroine, that never minded being underestimated.

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'THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA 2'

3.5 stars (out of 4)

MPA rating: PG-13 (for strong language and some suggestive references)

Running time: 1:59

How to watch: In theaters May 1

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