REVIEW: Mean Girls is a Watered Down Version of Its Predecessors
In 2004, Paramount Pictures released a movie which followed a homeschooled teenager experiencing the highs and lows of high school for the first time. At first glance, the movie seems like a wash. Besides young girls, who cares about the dramas of high school girls? Well, audience goers quickly came to find out this little movie was anything but a wash. Written by Tina Fey and based on Rosalind Wiseman’s 2002 book Queen Bees and Wannabes, Mean Girls became a cultural phenomenon. Featuring iconic one-liners and memorable scenes, every person who saw this movie, whether it be the original or the heavily edited TV version, could relate to at least one character and one scene in this movie. Now, Fey is bringing the story back to the big screen, but with a twist. The new movie isn’t just based on the 2004 movie, but it is also based off the Broadway musical, which premiered on in 2018.
In this new version of Mean Girls, we return to North Shore High School, where Cady Heron (Angourie Rice) has left her life behind in Kenya and is beginning a new life as a high school junior. Quickly realizing that high school is nothing like she expected, Cady is taken under the wings of artsy Janice (Auli’I Cravalho) and “almost to gay to function” Damian (Jaquel Spivey), who promise to show her the ins and outs of high school life, starting with the girls she needs to stay far away from, “The Plastics”. Led by Queen Bee, Regina George (Reneé Rapp), “The Plastics” are high school royalty. Everyone want to either be them or everyone wants to date them. When Regina takes a liking to the naïve Cady, Cady’s life is turned even more upside down. As she attempts to navigate her new role as a “Plastic”, her friendship with Janice and Damian, and her growing feelings for senior, Aaron Samuels (Christopher Briney), Cady will find that high school may not be what it’s all cracked up to be.
To start, this movie is not bad. As someone who loved the original movie and the stage musical, I enjoyed this version more than I thought I would. Tina Fey returned to write the screenplay and did a nice job finding a way to bring the musical to life on screen and for a modern audience. Sure, did some of the musical numbers make sense, no, but, opting to use the musical numbers as inner monologues rather than actual dialogue between characters worked for this movie. Fey also did a nice job adapting it for a modern audience. Instead of some of the outdates iconic moments from either adaptation, including the three-way call or Regina walking the halls with photo copies of the Burn Book, social media is brought to the forefront and used as the tool to instantly capture someone’s faults and lies and broadcast them instantly to the world . But, even with all this, the movie doesn’t even come close to its predecessor.
This movie musical is a watered-down version of Mean Girls. Fey plays it safe with this one, taking out a significant amount of one-lines and scenes that might be considered too bold for today’s generation of audiences. The nice thing about the original movie was Fey wasn’t afraid to be in your face about the inner workings of high school girls. They were all bite and no bark, where as this version was all bite and no bark. Characters that provided moments that were utterly ruthless, such as Regina and Janice, and delivered some of our favorite moments from either film or stage, were trimmed down to make way for a safer viewing experience. Watching these characters battle with not only each other, but with themselves were some of the highlights from the original. This was also very apparent in some of the scenes that made history from either the 2004 film or Broadway show. Fey opted for a tamer version of these scenes, which diluted the mean factor. Overall, the story lacked the risk and reward.
Cravalho, Rapp, and Spivey were the true stars in this movie. Rapp and Cravalho have voices that deserve to be heard, and there wasn’t enough in this movie. Both characters felt as if they were throwaway characters rather than characters that play pivotal parts to the story. More time should have been spent on these two. Spivey, on the other hand had quite the shoes to film, but he took Damian and ran with it. He didn’t try to be the same version of the character from the original, but brought a new feel to the character. Rice is okay as Cady, but doesn’t have the vocals to pull off the musical, while Bebe Wood (Gretchen) and Avantika (Karen) lack the drawing needed to pull off Regina’s cohorts.
Mean Girls 2024 isn’t going to win any awards or find itself cemented in pop culture history, but you will be able to watch it fully unedited on Freeform. If you are looking for a fun time, I suggest giving it a try. You will leave the theater saying, “that was cute”, but you will find yourself with an itch to watch the original or check out the Broadway show for the true risk and reward that made Mean Girls so fetch.
Grade: B-