Mean Girls is an adaptation of the adapted Broadway musical version which pulls from the 2004 classic film Mean Girls. This one - surprising to many - is a musical event with about fifteen songs from the stage play being cut for time. The film is packed with all singing, all dancing and all stupid. It’s not one that I had any expectations for and the initial reception to its opening in America made me nervous for what I was walking into. However, within the first song, I was pretty hooked in, with charisma and a light heart to the story, it is just as endearing as the original film. I don’t feel like we’ve surpassed the quality of the original film but the jokes have been updated for modern day, with the same flavours from the original film.
Unsurprisingly, an adapted story follows most of, if not all of the same beats that the original story does, just this time, it has more beats. Cady Heron (Angourie Rice) is a new transfer student to North Shore high school. Her and her mom move back to the US from Africa where she has been doing undisclosed research. Cady is immediately dropped into the high school environment, being introduced to the working ways of the world by Janice (Auli'i Cravalho) and Damian (Jaquel Spivey). They are both the social outcasts of the school, so have a perspective on all the cliques, detailing to Cady who is who, eventually ending on their explanation of the plastics. The Plastics consists of a group of three, Karen (Avantika), Gretchen (Bebe Wood) and the leader of the plastic pack, Regina George (Reneé Rapp). Regina is - as she sings in her intro song - “a pretty big deal” around the school. What she says goes, from the latest fashion trends to who is hot and who is not. She quickly decides that Cady can sit with them at lunch after Karen runs down the rules of The Plastics. Some of these include, wearing your hair up in a ponytail once a week and of course on Wednesdays, they wear pink.
We spend a bit of time with Cady and the plastics, as we see them shopping, dressing up for halloween and writing in their Burn Book. The Burn Book is a collection of pictures of the alumni of North Shore with scathing remarks about them written below. Cady joins in when she is annoyed with her teacher, Mrs Norbury (Tina Fey).
All this goes on while Cady develops a crush on the hotly debated local hot boy, Aaron Samuels (Christopher Briney). He is an ex of Regina’s and therefore off limits in the dating pool. Cady slowly starts to feel like all these rules and Janice’s constant painting of Regina as a “bitch” may be true, and that something has to be done to stop her, and get Aaron all to herself.
While the story remains the same and doesn’t reinvent the wheel, the takes on the characters plus the addition of the songs feels like it justifies its existence enough for me. Most of the jokes land really well and play on the original stupidity of the original film. Tina Fey is back to write this adaptation to have her stamp of comedy on it through the interactions making it not feel like a cheap retelling of the classic story.
The songs themselves help to push the story along and let us spend a bit more time with some characters who we didn’t get to in the original film. They are not the most life changing, catchy songs but I feel like they really work in the film itself, even if there’s not much to listen to after the credits roll. The songs given to Regina feel a lot more pop-like and I could see myself listening to these again.
The jokes were really effective to me, lending themselves to a more modern day humour, with a lot of the classic lines in there. They have opted to update some of the language used in the original with the change in times. Tina Fey spoke on this to say that words like “slut” or “whore” felt behind the times in a way that isn’t spoken as much today, feeling forced if included as heavily as in the original. To me, this is inconsequential to the vocabulary of the characters, not bending to a “woke agenda”, but generally realising the audience, and still making a film that can have self deprecating humour and clever jokes that play on the line.
From a character perspective, I think most of the actors do a really good job. With Auli’i and Jaquel standing out for me, bringing a lot of energy, good vocals and great screen presences. Reneé Rapp is very good in the role of Regina, even with the huge task of being compared to Rachael McAdams.
The only performances I was a little unsure of were Avantika as Karen and Chrisopher as Aaron. I think Karen had her moments of comedy but overall felt like she was over the top compared to the rest of the cast and Christopher is given not much to do as Aaron and therefore feels like a lacklustre love interest. Also, special shoutout to Busy Philipps who plays the role of Mrs. George spectacularly.
For the technical side, the camera work is really stylised in the singing sequences but lacks a lot of that style once we’re in the regular dialogue. This doesn't necessarily dim the energy of the film but the reality of the world is stripped away for the songs, and then mostly stuck rigidly to while not singing. There are a few exceptions, mostly with Janice and Damian in their narrator roles. I think the film could have felt a lot more slick with this style being kept up in some ways, from camera movement to shot choice.
It’s always a good feeling to be surprised by a film’s quality. It’s been a long time since my expectations had enhanced a film’s experience, as lately it has been a little bit in the opposite direction, following films from their early festivals runs to a general release creates a lot of buzz, Mean Girls had created the opposite of buzz. There were so many comparisons to the stage production and original film on its initial release in the US that I could only going in expecting a phoned in, cash grabbing adaptation of both mediums. However, what we got is the Mean Girls for a new generation, updated but also reliable in the story that we knew already, with some of the same elements. While not all the characters lived up to the rest, it is a steady film that I’m excited to add to my rewatch list.
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