Jonah Naplan   January 12, 2024

“Mean Girls” is a fun adaptation of a beloved cult classic even if it doesn’t hold a candle to the charms of the original. Of course, it exists in a sort of state of impossibility; the movie is an adaptation of a hit Broadway musical that premiered at the August Wilson Theatre in April 2018 but got shut down courtesy of COVID twenty-three months later, which is itself an adaptation of Tina Fey’s hilariously memorable 2004 movie “Mean Girls” which combined high school stereotypes with an important underlying theme about hate and belligerence, which is also an adaptation of Rosalind Wiseman’s 2002 book Queen Bees and Wannabes, a parental guide that explores the high school experience and toxic teenage girl behavior, the ultimate inspiration for Fey’s script. This film, directed by Samantha Jayne and Arturo Perez Jr., succeeds in spite of itself, streamlining fundamental ideas and scenes from each iteration into one two-hour musical-comedy of varying magnitudes. There’s something very small about this “Mean Girls,” whether it’s the boxy frame ratio that shrinks even more each time there’s a musical number, or the feeling that the action of this movie doesn’t extend beyond the reaches of the town in which it takes place, despite its prominent use of technologies that can take us anywhere we want to go.

The good thing is that it knows its place, and, more importantly, its audience. “Mean Girls” is never trying to do too much, and is aware of all the avenues it should go down to satisfy die-hard fans. Of course, you could argue that automatically renders it “clichéd,” and to some extent, you’d be correct. This is a version that takes the most commercially known aspects of the tale and focuses in on why exactly they’ve stood the test of time. To that end, it sort of unintentionally comes off as a TV-movie-type, Disney Channel-version of this story, and loses some of the edge that made the first so memorable. That doesn’t detract from just how entertaining the movie really is (and it’s even more fun if you get the chance to see it in a theater), but it’s an elephant in the room that has been present in many of these recent “intellectual property” pictures that seem to want to broaden their appeal for families (a clear product of the pandemic that rid studios of their finances).

This one opens with a bang: a transition that takes you from a suburban garage to the plains of Kenya to a high school in Illinois introduces us to Cady Heron (Angourie Rice), a home-schooled teen who is soon taken under the wing of art nerd Janis (Auliʻi Cravalho) and the “too gay to function” Damian (Jacquel Spivey), a duo regarded as “outcasts” amid the football jocks, theater kids, and of course, the Plastics, a trio of meanies led by the despicable Regina George (Reneé Rapp) who is flanked by her right-hand women—the beleaguered Gretchen (Bebe Wood) and the not-particularly-bright Karen (Avantika)—neither of whom are actually that mean but have gotten roped in as Regina’s obedient vassals and can’t do very much about it anymore. Regina sees someone easily manipulated in Cady and invites her to join their clique, which ends up unraveling all sorts of long-kept secrets and unbridled hate, particularly an old friendship between Regina and Janis that ended in chaos and ruined the latter’s reputation.

Fortunately for Janis, Cady can act as an inside man, spying on the Plastics, and reporting back to her about all the vile things they’re saying and writing about in Regina’s “Burn Book,” an important MacGuffin that tears the whole scheme apart in the third act. Complicating matters further is Cady’s crush on Regina’s ex, Aaron Samuels (Christopher Briney of “The Summer I Turned Pretty”), who sits in front of her in AP Calculus, and tries to help Cady each time she pretends to be stuck (she’s not actually having trouble, she just wants an excuse to talk to Aaron). The screenplay by Tina Fey (who also reprises her role as Ms. Norbury) is very adamant about the idea of Janis’s revenge—it even dedicates a recurring song called “Revenge Party” to that central concept—and will proceed to have characters replace her skincare products with lard, convince her of the nutritional benefits of Kälteen bars (they really make you gain weight), and humiliate and embarrass her in various ways and forms to tarnish her career as North Shore High School’s royalty, before the big bad penultimately gets hit by a bus, and everyone starts to forgive one another—you know how it goes.

But now it’s a musical! For the most part, the song and dance numbers in “Mean Girls” add extra value to what’s going on, either by enhancing our understanding of an event or merely just glamorizing what would normally be a bland high school setting. None of them are extraneous, and each adds something visually interesting to the palette of the screen, whether that’s color, or editing, or cinematography. There’s something thematic about the whole experience, probably buoyed by its shift from full frame to widescreen—it adds black bars so we know a change in tone and energy is taking place. Rapp (who played Regina on-stage in the Broadway production) outsings everyone, and the cinematography almost woefully depicts her powerful ripple effect as she moves through the school, like a hungry lion that’s just been let off its leash. Her power ballad “Someone Gets Hurt” is a stand-out, and of course her signature “My Name Is Regina George” jingle is ever-present amidst other checklist items. Rice is respectable as Cady, and nails the fish out of water aesthetic that’s long defined her character, but she’s completely overshadowed by actresses like Rapp and also Cravalho who just seem more comfortable and experienced as performers—in addition to playing Ariel in “The Little Mermaid Live!,” the latter was also the voice of Moana.

In the grand tradition of musical theater adaptations, it ends up being the smaller parts you remember most, and wish received more screen time—Fey is great of course, playing a role she’s written herself and sat with for the twenty years that followed, but Jon Hamm as a sex-ed teacher, Jenna Fischer as Cady’s supportive mom, and Tim Meadows, also reprising his role as the school principal Ron Duvall, are integral touches that you’ll wish could have been fleshed out more. One aspect that’s featured aplenty, and to less successful avail, is the superfluous use of screens—extended montages of images and noise that use TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube posts and videos—that appear anytime there’s a peak in the action or a character does something shocking or unexpected or an occasion goes horribly wrong, as in Regina getting splashed with water during homecoming pictures, coining a wet makeup look for the following weeks, or her annual ritual of the “Jingle Bell Rock” dance that ends in collapse. The gimmick worked wonders in the stage production of “Dear Evan Hansen,” which was later translated to less effective terms in the proceeding 2021 movie, but it feels like an incredibly transactional choice here, a simple method of depicting the passage of time that doesn’t elevate our knowledge of character motives, changes, piques, or the like. What it does do is give us all a painful reminder of the culture of mass media and what it chooses to highlight, which is often the failures and pratfalls of those we deem important or famous. Of course, that’s probably the point—“Mean Girls” is built around the idea of hate for hate’s sake, and preventing poor speech about a friend behind their back—which, I suppose, means the film is getting its message across.

But I’ve just got a feeling that a movie this cultured could have found smarter ways to unpack its themes, especially considering how well the rest of it is composed. In a sense, this is another story of the powerful one-percent (just check out the George family’s mansion) subjugating those they see as inferior because they’ve just been lucky enough to have it made. That’s always been a sort of secondary message to the “Mean Girls” storyline, but it reads even more relevant now. Admittedly, we didn’t really need a new adaptation of this fable in 2024, despite the fact that it is the original’s 20th anniversary, but it’s nice that we do have one, regardless of cynics who hate the spontaneous nature of musicals and think that solitary market should have died off long ago. Those things all buy into why the odds weren’t really in this movie’s favor, but Fey pushes through. When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.

Now playing in theaters.