An adaptation of a Broadway musical which was based on a movie that was adapted from a book, the 2024 version of Mean Girls can’t help but feel intrinsically derivative.
When Rosalind Wiseman penned the parent’s guide Queen Bees and Wannabes (the basis for the 2004 comedy classic) in the early 2000s, I doubt she suspected the cultural cache that her work would generate. But several reworkings later, we now have what could have been a worthwhile Gen Z remake of the original film but is instead something more frustratingly myopic. It’s a beat-for-beat redo of the story from 2004’s Mean Girls and a full-fledged musical, the former of which is bound to generate disappointed déjà vu and the latter of which has been side-stepped in the marketing as it was for Wonka last month.
Once again, our way into the cutthroat high school setting of Mean Girls is through Cady Heron (Angourie Rice), a bright teen who has been home-schooled until she moves to the U.S. from Africa. She is befriended right away by social outcasts Janis (Auli’i Cravalho) and Damian (Jaquel Spivey), who give her the skinny on the cliques and hierarchies that rule their school. Cady inadvertently catches the attention of fiercely popular Regina (Reneé Rapp) and is taken into her group of similarly materialistic girls known as The Plastics. But things get complicated when Cady falls for the handsome Aaron (Christopher Briney), who recently ended a relationship with Regina. When Cady decides to pursue Aaron, even though fellow Plastics Gretchen (Bebe Wood) and Karen (Avantika) advise against it, a rift occurs in the coveted clique.
Whether the movie likes it or not, Mean Girls will lead to inevitable comparisons to its predecessor, likely beginning with the fresh lineup of actors. The 2004 comedy was impeccably cast, with a career-best performance by Lindsay Lohan and breakout roles for now-bonafide movie stars Rachel McAdams and Amanda Seyfried. As Cady, Rice invokes a similar naïveté as Lohan, and while she doesn’t quite nail the transformation into loathsome sociopath, she nonetheless renders an immensely likable protagonist at the outset. On the flip side, Rapp is mostly a bore as the villainous “queen bee,” which is ironic since she played the role in the stage musical for two years. When it comes to the singing and dancing, the talent is there, but her performance lacks the alluring deviousness that McAdams used to make Regina George an iconic character.
While directors Samantha Jayne and Arturo Perez Jr. do what they can to make the musical numbers pop visually, the songs don’t add much depth to the plot and don’t musically stand out much from one another either.
Penned by Tina Fey, the 2004 film is bolstered by an endless string of memorable quips, but the lyrics in these musical interludes just are not up to the level of that original screenplay. Cravalho, still probably most famous for playing the title character in Moana, leads the movie’s best number “I’d Rather Be Me” and comes closest to justifying why this movie should have song breaks embedded in it. Her soaring vocals do call to mind an interesting paradox: How can a character like Regina, who obviously sees herself as superior to the theater kids, belt out Broadway-ready numbers?
If you try to ignore the show tune elements — which audience members who go into this movie not knowing it’s a musical will no doubt be doing — there are some lateral moves from the first film that are hit-and-miss.
Fey returns not only as the screenwriter but as math teacher Ms. Norbury, who gets some additional zingers this time around. When she finds out Cady is homeschooled, she sarcastically remarks, “That’s a fun way to take jobs from my union.” Wood is uncanny at capturing the timbre and cadence of Lacey Chabert’s work as Gretchen in the 2004 movie, but at the end of the day, it’s merely imitation. Avantika brings more unique obliviousness to Karen, but it still feels like it’s leaning on the work Seyfried initially created.
Mean Girls is a so-so update on an excellent comedy that never really needed a makeover in the first place.
New movies coming this week
- Playing only in theaters is I.S.S., a sci-fi thriller starring Ariana DeBose and Chris Messina involving U.S. and Russian crews of astronauts aboard the International Space Station who begin to turn on one another when conflict breaks out on Earth.
- Also coming to theaters is Freud’s Last Session, a psychological drama starring Anthony Hopkins and Matthew Goode which depicts the fictional meeting of the minds between psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud and literary scholar C.S. Lewis as they debate the existence of God.
- Streaming on Netflix is The Kitchen, a science-fiction drama starring Kane Robinson and Jedaiah Bannerman set in a dystopian future London in which all social housing has been eliminated but a community known as The Kitchen refuses to abandon their home.
