The Mean Girls movie musical is out today and it is… fine.
It’s been 20 years since the original; 6 years since the musical opened on Broadway; 22 years since Rosalind Wiseman’s Queen Bees and Wannabes (the book on which it was based) was released; and 13 years since the standalone sequel Mean Girls 2 debuted on ABC Family.
With so many iterations of this franchise it’s no surprise that it was essentially a carbon copy of a carbon copy of a carbon copy of a carbon copy that did it’s job, but had too many remnants from the previous versions to make it 100% enjoyable.
It had its moments and landed every punched-up joke from the previous iterations, but it didn’t add anything new. For some, it will just make them appreciate the 2004 movie more.
The good thing about all of this is that the new iteration is still in the same hands as the musical and movie. Tina Fey wrote and produced, while Jeff Richmond provided the music and Nell Benjamin scribed the lyrics — but that doesn’t necessarily make it as good. This feels like another version to throw on the pile.
Directed by Samantha Jayne and Arturo Perez Jr., the bones of the franchise are in the place: new girl in town Cady Heron (Angourie Rice) gets inducted into “The Plastics,” ruled by diva queen bee Regina George (Reneé Rapp) and her minions Gretchen (Bebe Wood) and Karen (Avantika). Cady falls for Regina’s ex Aaron Samuels (Christopher Briney) and ends up in the diva’s crosshairs. As Cady looks to take down the queen alongside her artsy friends Janis (Auli’i Cravalho) and Damian (Jaquel Spivey), but instead learns the importance of staying true to yourself.
There are many people out there who needed this new iteration of the 2004 feature starring Rachel McAdams and Lindsay Lohan. There are also many of those who didn’t ask for it. I’ll set up camp in the latter. Even so, I was willing to go on this new Mean Girls journey that feels like a yearly assignment to do a check in with popular culture benchmarks.
At one point during the movie, my friend leaned over and whispered, “What’s with their makeup?” which later turned into “What’s up with the lighting?” And that’s all I could focus on most of the time: the distracting makeup and shoddy lighting.
All of that aside, the movie is saved by the sultriness and electric charisma provided by Rapp who absolutely holds this film on her shoulders. If it weren’t for her, Mean Girls would be an absolute mess. As soon as she breathily sings “My name is Regina George…and I am a massive deal”, you get put under Rapp’s spell and gravitate towards her energy — specifically during the “Someone Gets Hurt” sequence which is the best moment of the entire movie. The music, the staging, the choreo, the sexiness — it’s giving.
Helping carry the weight is Moana herself. Cravalho makes the character of Janis her own and breathes a new — and more queer life into the fan favorite role originated by Lizzy Caplan. Cravalho, along with the uber-charasmatic Spivey, who plays her too-gay-too-function partner in crime, give the perfect musical flair that was needed for this movie.
In essence, this new Mean Girls is a love story between Regina and Janis — because this is their movie. I wish they leaned into that a lot more, but alas. The world is not ready for that. Cady, Karen, and Gretchen are window dressing and the actors playing the characters were too tethered to the original to add something new. Cady was just… boring; Karen was a vapid caricature; Gretchen was a great impersonation of Lacey Chabert’s version and Briney as Aaron Samuels is giving Adiran Grenier in Drive Me Crazy… but even his performance felt like another sheet of ditto paper from the bigger Mean Girls machine.
Sure, it wasn’t the best movie, but at least we will always have the Wal-Mart Mean Girls Black Friday ads.
