Contrary to the millennial pitchforks you will find unsheathed in the TikTok comment section of any ad for this film, Mean Girls is not a straight remake of the 2004 teen classic also titled Mean Girls, but rather an adaptation of the Broadway musical, Mean Girls, that in turn was based on the 2004 film, Mean Girls, which itself was a loose adaptation of Rosalind Wiseman’s non-fiction book Queen Bees & Wannabes…keeping up? Yet, Paramount Pictures would *really* not like you to know that the film is a musical, and they’ve gone out of their way to completely hide that fact from you in every trailer and piece of marketing they’ve made for the film, save for the top hole of the A in the word “Mean” being made of an eighth note, signifying to you, the completely unoblivious consumer, that the film is a musical. This has been a trend as of late, with Blitz Bazawule’s The Color Purple also completely omitting the fact the film is a musical from nearly every piece of marketing in its press run, rather than to simply describe the film as “A Bold New Take on the Beloved Classic,” in the same way this version of Mean Girls is simply “A New Twist from Tina Fey,” all because a few focus groups told some studios that they aren’t crazy about musicals. This immediately sets Mean Girls up for failure as it alienates those who wouldn’t mind a version of Mean Girls doing something differently in the same vein as Hairspray (2007), etc., and in turn, angers those who didn’t mind the idea of a straight remake of the film suddenly realizing they’ve been duped into a musical by deceptive marketing. You made a musical, and you better deal with it with some goddamned respect.
Tina Fey plays Ms. Norbury in MEAN GIRLS from Paramount Pictures. Photo courtesy of Jojo Whilden/Paramount Pictures.
Anyways, Mean Girls is a very important film for me, as I would imagine it is for a good deal of late-millennial queers who were raised by the immediate impact of the film’s release in 2004, as well as the subsequent internet obsession with the film come the early 2010s where the true cultural relevance of Tina Fey’s film became truly apparent. With mega-star Lindsay Lohan at its core, and soon-to-be mega-stars in Oscar-nominees Rachel McAdams and Amanda Seyfried, as well as Queen of the Hallmark Channel Lacey Chabert filling out the titular roles, there was something truly special about the lightning-in-a-bottle microcosm of the mid-2000s teen culture the film captured. Much in the same way that something like Bring It On (2000) and Legally Blonde (2001) did for Y2K culture, it was only natural that Mean Girls followed in their footsteps into becoming the inevitable Broadway musical it was always meant to be. With a book also penned by Tina Fey (Mean Girls; A Haunting in Venice), music written by Fey’s husband Jeff Richmond (30 Rock; Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt), and lyrics by Nell Benjamin, the show received positive reviews and, of course, brought us to where we are now with this musical film (as much as Paramount would love to tell you it isn’t one).
The plot remains much the same, but let’s refresh.
L-R: Jaquel Spivey plays Damian, Angourie Rice plays Cady, and Auli’i Cravalho plays Janis in MEAN GIRLS from Paramount Pictures. Photo courtesy of Jojo Whilden/Paramount Pictures.
Cady Heron (Angourie Rice) is a formerly homeschooled transfer student moving from the wilderness of Kenya where her mother (Jenna Fischer) worked in research to the Chicago suburb of Evanston, Illinois. Upon arriving at North Shore High, Cady finds herself at the whim of the wilderness that is public high school and is soon taken under the wings of artistic outcasts Janis ‘Imi’ike (Auli’i Cravalho) and Damian Hubbard (Jaquel Spivey), who give her the rundown of the politics of the school’s cliques, headed by the vapid, manipulative Plastics, led by the charismatic, yet cruel Regina George (Reneé Rapp), and assisted by the wealthy people-pleaser Gretchen Wieners (Bebe Wood) and idiotic, yet harmless Karen Shetty (Avantika). Cady incidentally catches the eye of Regina, who begins to loop her into the ranks of the Plastics, despite Janis’s wishes. However, when Cady is inevitably betrayed by Regina for taking back her ex-boyfriend, and Cady’s crush, Aaron Samuels (Christopher Briney) just for cruelty’s sake, she hatches a plan with Janis and Damian to exact revenge on Regina, though the newfound power from being a Plastic might get in Cady’s way.
There’s a balance I had to strike with watching Mean Girls as a massive fan of the original film who also had never seen the musical before, mostly in trying not to nitpick every way that this version of the film either changes or pales in comparison to the original. It took me a minute to be able to set aside by ego of self-importance that Mean Girls (2004) is somehow *my* film when it is, in fact, a cultural phenomenon that me and all of my friends could pretty much recite verbatim at any given moment with zero notice. Going in with a fine-toothed comb to complain about the ways in which the film changes things that perhaps wouldn’t fly as easily in 2024 as they once did in 2004 can become very “Old Man Yells at Cloud” very quickly from my end. Sure, I was annoyed by the Burn Book changing Regina’s entry from “Fugly Slut” to “Fugly Cow,” which frankly, doesn’t slide off the tongue nearly as easily, or with nearly as much ferocious veracity that it’s supposed to have, but I also can’t speak to whether or not teenagers these days actually refuse to use the word “slut” anymore, even in deeply personal insults, out of genuine concern for being construed as sex negative, or whether or not this updated version of the film simply removed it for the sake of being toothless. It’s a difficult balance to strike, and one that I can’t say I always succeed at without having to catch myself. The trailers, for all the deceptive marketing, weren’t lying about one thing: this really isn’t your mother’s Mean Girls; iconic lines are scrapped or changed, beats are hit differently, some characters exhibit different archetypes entirely, and the film doesn’t seek to recapture millennial nostalgia as much as it does capture a more relatable Gen Z/Gen Alpha viewpoint, as a teen film should do, even if it makes bitterly nostalgic elders like myself a little peeved.
L-R: Bebe Wood plays Gretchen, Reneé Rapp plays Regina, and Avantika plays Karen in MEAN GIRLS from Paramount Pictures. Photo courtesy of Jojo Whilden/Paramount Pictures.
As for what’s on display here, there really is no denying that, for the most part, the cast of Mean Girls really got it right, with Reneé Rapp (The Sex Lives of College Girls) taking Regina George into the palm of her hand. Obviously, she’s not Rachel McAdams (Game Night), but in the same way that I can be a little thrown off by some iconic elements of the original film being absent, I deeply appreciate the way that this musical gives the new cast leeway in making these characters their own entities, and not just cheap imitations of the likes of original cast members McAdams, Lohan, Seyfried, Chabert, etc.. This is Rapp’s Regina, and it’s a wonderful take on the way that the internet has shaped Gen Z cruelty into a much more deadpan, far less bratty form of villainy. On paper, I understand that that might sound boring, but Rapp brings a magnetic energy to the role that really sells a teenager seeking the power of a confident adult. Other standouts in the film are the wonderfully paired Cravalho (Moana; Crush) and Spivey, who also give their own spin on Janis and Damian, and with the case of Spivey, might actually be my favorite version of the character across both films, which feels like sacrilege seeing as I adore Daniel Franzese’s original Damian, but Spivey really does have that much star power to spare here. Also, while a much smaller player, Avantika’s (The Sex Lives of College Girls) Karen Shetty is a wonderfully docile addition to the roster here, one that feels greatly at home here.
However, just to be a little bit of a bitch about things…the casting of Aaron Samuels (Christopher Briney) in this version is an absolute chop. Where is the dreaminess? Where is the appeal? That’s the whole point and I just…didn’t believe that either someone like Rapp or Rice would be pining after a boy so bland in more ways than one.
Busy Philipps plays Mrs. George in MEAN GIRLS from Paramount Pictures. Photo courtesy of Jojo Whilden/Paramount Pictures.
In their first feature film, directors Samantha Jayne and Arturo Perez Jr. do an admirable job, particularly in the film’s bigger sequences, like the brightly fantastical “Revenge Party” number, comically grounded “Apex Predator,” and the sultry, villainous anthem of “Someone Gets Hurt,” where it’s apparent they have a clear understanding of how to block and shoot such an airy, vibrant musical with the life it deserves. I also quite enjoyed the usage of the differing aspect ratios between 1.85:1 and 2.35.1 for the larger, more fantasy-driven musical sequences. Though, sometimes I found myself questioning why the choice of shooting location for the new North Shore High School felt so…constrained? The hallways are tight, drab, with little-to-no natural light coming through, with low ceilings that give large common areas that require good space for the scale of the operation that the Plastics head to take shape, something I assumed would be even more expanded upon in a musical version, where we could have the breathing room to delve into the more fantastical elements of it all. What we get is a high school that feels more like a typical American high school in the middle of nowhere without much visual flare to speak of. While that could’ve worked in the original, in a film where there are multiple fantasy sequences that could’ve used the space of an expansive, modern high school to its advantage, this North Shore just feels underwhelming. You could almost switch the sets of the 2004 and 2024 films for better effect.
Tim Meadows plays Mr. Duvall in MEAN GIRLS from Paramount Pictures. Photo courtesy of Jojo Whilden/Paramount Pictures.
And it’s that sort of back-and-forth between both immense pomp and deflating anticlimax with its opposing elements that left me feeling very “down the middle” about this new musical version of Mean Girls, though I would definitely give it more grace than scorn and say my polarization definitely leans more on the positive side than the negative one. This is largely due to the film’s (mostly) excellent casting and effective direction from Jayne and Perez when the film swings big in its musical sequences. It’s an airy, poppy, and completely unserious musical that isn’t demanding to be spoken in the same breath as Les Misérables (2012) or The Color Purple (2023), and I think there’s a refreshing nature to that type of peppy musical that many seem to be allergic to nowadays. Much of the changes to the film’s script don’t have the same cadence and flow that Fey’s original screenplay did, but I did find the modernization to the Gen Z generation to be pretty seamless and indicative of the timeless nature that high school cruelty has on us. It gets stuff wrong, it loses its bite in many ways, but it would be even more criminal to not acknowledge all the things that Mean Girls does right in the process. It’s more “grool” than “fetch,” but I can accept that.
In theaters January 12th, 2024.
For more information, head to the official Paramount Pictures Mean Girls website.
Final Score: 3 out of 5.
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Categories: In Theaters, Reviews
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