Mean Girls (2024)
Regina George and the Plastics are back, y’all, and according to those involved, it’s not a remake but an addition. Heh. Danged right. Among other changes, this version is a musical.
I went into Mean Girls with a wee bit of trepidation because the trailers don’t give any indication that people are going to see a musical. Like, at all. How would my audience take it? More importantly, how would they react if the music completely stank?
They probably did better than I because they were laughing the whole time. I alternated between cringing and sort of enjoying this film, and by the end, I couldn’t decide which reaction won. I liked it and I didn’t like it.
The plot of Mean Girls is pretty familiar: Homeschooler Cady moves to Chicago, where she finds friends in Damian and Janis at her new high school, but when she sees Regina George and the Plastics, she can’t resist the siren call of popularity. Problem is, all the girls are absolutely, well, mean to each other, and it all comes to a head with the appearance of the infamous Burn Book, where Regina and the Plastics write down the absolute worst things they can think of about every girl in school. Not to give any spoilers, but it becomes a contest as to who can fall on their face the hardest.
Full disclosure: I didn’t care for the 2004 movie. It was a little too teenybopper for my taste, a bit raunchy for raunchy’s sake and homeschoolers were portrayed as absolutely clueless. After seeing the 2024 version, though, I almost long for the older film because there’s a relative innocence about it. The new Mean Girls don’t need a Burn Book; they’ve got TikTok. The previous Mean Girls were relatively modest; the 2024 Girls show ample cleavage.
Also full disclosure: I liked seeing Ashley Park as the French teacher in the movie, although she doesn’t have much to do, and Jaquel Spivey is one of the most fun guys in the movie. He and Auli’i Cravalho are Cady’s conduits into the mystifying world of American high school as well as the audience’s Greek chorus.
As far as the musical aspects go, there’s a little bit of dancing and a lot of unfortunate chaos going on, such as during the bridge of the “Apex Predator” number when some of the students are pretending to be animals sniffing each other’s butts. It’s not funny. The songs themselves are merely OK, and there was definite miscasting; Angourie Rice as Cady is a good actor but a fairly weak singer.
A lot of the comedy isn’t funny, either, and even the actors can’t hide how cringe-y so much of it is. No one could pronounce Cady’s name for some reason, and all the flubs become an increasingly lame running gag. Jenna Fischer looks downright uncomfortable as Cady’s mom, and Busy Phillips, who made a big splash as wild child Audrey Liddell on Dawson’s Creek, plays Mrs. George as loudly and annoyingly as humanly possible. Even screenwriter Tina Fey, who reprises her 2004 role as Ms. Norbury, looks as if her own material ran away from her.
One of the few sane faces in Mean Girls is that of Lindsay Lohan, who makes an appearance as the emcee in the Mathletes tournament. She looks poised, in control, and on track, playing her teeny bit part to the hilt, a refreshing change in a movie where both the teenagers and the grownups seem to have lost the plot. What a difference real maturity makes.
Mean Girls is currently in theaters. Rated PG-13.
My grade: C+
Principal Cast: Angourie Rice, Renee Rapp, Auli’i Cravalho, Jaquel Spivey, Avantika, Bebe Wood, Christopher Briney, Jenna Fischer, Busy Phillips, Tina Fey, Tim Meadows, Lindsay Lohan, Jon Hamm, Ashley Park, Connor Ratliff, Mahi Alam, John El-Jor, Brian Altemus.
Directed by Samantha Jayne and Arturo Perez Jr.
Written by Tina Fey.