If you haven’t noticed, things aren’t all that great out there. I mean, just in general, with wars raging in the Middle East, divisiveness roiling at home, AI poised to take all our jobs—you get the gist. So it makes sense that Steven Spielberg, the great American auteur of optimism, awe, and childlike wonder, would once again look to the skies. He generally sees aliens not as a destructive or frightening force, but benevolent creatures filled with curiosity, kindness, and wisdom. (His take on H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds being a notable exception.)

Disclosure Day is a film that suggests we should all be kinder to each other and listen to each other and lead with our “greatest evolutionary advantage”: empathy. And honestly, who could argue with that? The problem is, I found the final third of the film, when it rather explicitly spells out its themes, a bit moist. The more sentimental it got and the more John Williams’ soaring score all but begged for our tears, the less I enjoyed it.

But man, before that it’s a heckuva ride.

The film starts in medias res, with one of our heroes, Daniel (Josh O’Connor), rescuing his girlfriend, Jane (Eve Hewson), from a secretive government agency. (This all takes place at a pro wrestling match because if there’s one thing Spielberg can do it’s shoot the hell out of a set piece.) Daniel has something they need—a remote control-like doohickey that gives you access to other people’s brains and a whole lot more. And because Josh O’Connor has that expressive, gently handsome, sad-clown face, we never doubt for a second that he is the good guy and the men in black cars—led by a spectacularly bearded Colin Firth—are the baddies. Daniel grabs Jane, threatens them all with the doohickey, and escapes to a nunnery. Literally. Turns out Jane was studying to become a nun before she had a crisis of, well, it’s not totally clear. She still clutches her large cross necklace when she’s afraid, at one point, digging it into her palm and creating a kind of Spielbergian stigmata.

Meanwhile, in Kansas City, a perky TV weatherwoman named Margaret (Emily Blunt) sees a cardinal (the bird, not the religious figure) and suddenly just knows things. She speaks to her befuddled boyfriend Jackson (Wyatt Russell, perfectly cast as the kind but clueless dudebro) in Russian. On the way to the television station, she is stopped by a cop for speeding and she knows things about him, too, intuitively. She gives him advice on how to fix things with his wife. (Buy her that red velvet cupcake she likes, she says.) He’s so shocked, he lets her drive away without a ticket. At the station, she speaks perfect Korean to a visiting dignitary—I should mention that while all this is happening, World War III is looming ominously in the background—and then, once on air, starts speaking in clicks and gulps, until she collapses.

Jackson takes her to the hospital but, of course, she doesn’t have a brain tumor or Parkinson’s and she’s pretty sure the men in black lurking outside her hospital room are not there to help.

She escapes and somehow, through a kind of telepathy/shared grokking of the universe, she meets up with Daniel.

There’s another key figure in this film and that’s Colin Firth’s good guy counterpart, Hugo, swathed in professorial tweed and played with paternal warmth by Colman Domingo.

Hugo, if you will, is Team Disclosure—he believes humans would benefit from knowing about the aliens in their midst.

Firth’s Scanlon is Team Concealment—he thinks mankind can’t handle the truth. Let the grownups in the room handle the aliens.

One of the film’s actually interesting philosophical musing has to do with Jane’s faith. If aliens exist, what becomes of God? Is a divine entity no longer necessary? An intriguing premise worked out a bit too patly by Jane’s beloved Mother Superior (Elizabeth Marvel) who notes that God wouldn’t be so selfish as to let all that vast space go to waste.

As mentioned, the first two-thirds of the film absolutely rips. Nobody can do genre better than Spielberg—hell, he invented a bunch of them. Part of that means inserting welcome bits of humor in the midst of the chaos. At one point, Hugo instructs Margaret to ditch her cell phone. She throws it out of the car and tells Jackson to back up over it, but he keeps screwing up—backing up again and again, missing the phone entirely. It’s not quite DiCaprio’s Bob desperate to plug in his phone in One Battle After Another, but it’s the sort of touch that elevates the film.

Because there are few directors who can orchestrate an action scene better than Spielberg, the chase scenes are unsurprisingly electrifying—including one involving a half-crushed car dangling from the side of a train and another one involving a car stopping on a dime at the edge of a cliff.

The acting across the board is exemplary, with Blunt a standout as a woman who suddenly knows everything—and isn’t sure she wants to.

In general, Disclosure Day is rollicking entertainment until that dewy-eyed bit in the end. I understand that Spielberg wants to appeal to our better angels but I wish he had done it in a more subtle way. But for better or for worse—mostly for better— Spielberg’s gotta Spielberg.

(Before signing off, there is one depressing thought I have to get off my chest: Spielberg treats the “disclosure” as a seismic event—a game changer, the kind of thing that would make everyone pause, listen, and rethink their relationship to the planet. But did you know that Donald Trump recently declassified the government’s database about UAP (Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena) and it was met with a collective shrug? In fairness, there were no cool aliens in the file, but I can’t help but wonder if Spielberg’s premise is outmoded. If CNN broke into programming to tell us there were aliens in our midst, would we even bother to look up from our screens? Would it change a thing?)

When contemplating a sequel, especially one that comes out two decades after the original, you must ask yourself the following questions:

• Is it better than the original?
• Is it even in the same league as the original?
• Does it make a good case for its own existence?
• Does it give us a chance to spend time with some characters we’ve grown attached to over the years?

Regarding The Devil Wears Prada 2, my answers are, in order: No. Also no. Not really. And yes.
The original The Devil Wears Prada, which came out in 2006 and followed the adventures of the hopelessly unstylish (at first) young journalist Andy Sachs (Anne Hathaway) facing off against the formidable Anna Wintour proxy, Runway magazine editor Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep), has turned into one of the quintessential comfort films. It’s the kind of film you can watch over and over again—and probably recite some parts by heart. It’s aspirational in a variety of ways: A young woman finding her voice. A formidable woman softening a bit, while demonstrating why she’s so formidable. A snooty but loving guncle (everyone’s favorite heterosexual gay man, Stanley Tucci). An arch nemesis turned reluctant ally (Emily Blunt). And fashion, all that glorious fashion.

Much has happened in the ensuing 20 years. Everyone agrees that Andy’s boyfriend (Adrian Grenier, who doesn’t appear in the sequel) was a dud. Miranda Priestly’s “cerulean blue” monologue—this film’s answer to A Few Good Men’s “you can’t handle the truth”—has gone viral. Oh, and print media is, let’s just say, not the powerhouse it used to be.

As the sequel starts, Andy is an award-winning investigative journalist whose newspaper has just folded. Meanwhile, Miranda has a crisis of her own—she wrote glowingly about a fashion brand that was revealed to use sweat shops and is now the subject of memes that vilify her, depicting her with a Pinocchio nose or dressed as a fast food worker with a speech bubble that reads, “You want lies with that?” (Films notoriously have a hard time replicating meme culture.)

Somehow, Andy is hired to be a feature writer at Runway magazine in the hopes that her famous journalistic integrity will send the right message to readers.

When Andy bounds into Miranda’s office on her first day back at Runway, she’s excited to finally be on the same footing as her old boss—indeed, she assumes that it was Miranda who put in the good word for her. Instead, Miranda turns to Tucci’s Nigel and says, “Who is this?…Do I know her?” (It’s a funny, albeit lazy joke.) And just for a second, all of Andy’s poise and confidence is out of the door. Briefly, she’s that gawky college grad wearing Marshalls sweater sets.

Part of the fun of the original was witnessing Andy’s makeover, but in this film, she’s fabulous from the jump, dressed in fitted blazers, oversized sunglasses, and stiletto heels. (Nigel quips, “Oh, look what TJ Maxx dragged in,” when he first sees her, but no one’s buying it.)

As mentioned, the dud of a boyfriend is out of the picture, but they give Andy an almost insultingly perfunctory love interest, an architect played by Patrick Brammall. (If anyone can explain his overarching role in the film, other than to remind us that Andy is still a catch—duh—please let me know.)

The film’s crisis, essentially, is how can they save Runway in a world of venture capitalists who buy up publications just to cut staff, reduce coverage, or worse. If in the original film Runway was all-powerful in its influence, reputation, and glamour—now it’s just a little sad.

Justin Theroux has a funny turn as Benji Barnes, a Jeff Bezos type who is dating Blunt’s Emily. He’s depicted as a big nerd who has been given the glam treatment by his stylish new girlfriend (who can’t get enough of his money but clearly despises him).

All the leads are still in good form—both in terms of performance and appearance (they are remarkably well preserved). Streep, in particular, makes great hay of Priestly having to cut back on things—how dare they make Miranda hang up her own coat (sacré bleu!) and fly coach (the horror!).

This is clearly one of those cases where all the famous people were game to do a sequel so they built a script to make it happen. Although only two writers are credited—Aline Brosh McKenna and Lauren Weisberg—it has the distinct feel of having been written by committee. The film is competently directed by David Frankel, who also did the original, although there are a few too many shots of Andy striding quickly through New York traffic for my taste.

The Devil Wears Prada 2 is a chance to hang out with our old friends and see some great clothing—and little else. For some, that will be enough.