Mean Girls review – defanged take on a teen classic

Sartre wrote that ​“Hell is oth­er peo­ple” but I’ll be more spe­cif­ic: Hell is teenage girls. Whether you’ve been one, raised one, or mere­ly sur­vived an edu­ca­tion among the rav­en­ous hoards, it’s a jun­gle out there. This zoomor­phism fea­tured heav­i­ly in Mark Waters’ 2004 com­ing-of-age com­e­dy Mean Girls, which cen­tred on the social pol­i­tics of a sub­ur­ban Illi­nois high school through the eyes of a new trans­fer stu­dent, Cady Heron (then played by Lind­say Lohan). Waters’ film became a crit­i­cal and com­mer­cial hit, cat­a­pult­ing ris­ing stars Lohan, Rachel McAdams and Aman­da Seyfried into the mainstream.

Two decades lat­er the film is still wide­ly regard­ed as a high point of the teen movie canon, sit­ting pret­ty next to Heathers and The Break­fast Club for its humour and only slight­ly exag­ger­at­ed take on the high school food chain. In the age of end­less IP, per­haps it was inevitable that the huge suc­cess of Mean Girls would spawn a musi­cal adap­ta­tion, which debuted on Broad­way in 2017. Sev­en years lat­er, this musi­cal is the basis for a new Mean Girls movie, which takes the orig­i­nal plot and char­ac­ters, updates the set­ting, and adds in a hand­ful of for­get­table songs with chore­o­graphed dance numbers.

Angourie Rice now stars as Cady, who trans­fers to North Shore High after being home­schooled in Kenya where her moth­er worked as a researcher of unspec­i­fied dis­ci­pline. She is quick­ly befriend­ed at her new school by proud mis­fits Janis ​‘Imi’ike (Auliʻi Craval­ho) and Damien Hub­bard (Jaquel Spivey) who explain the class­room cliques – the most notable of which is the Plas­tics. Regi­na George (Reneé Rapp) and her under­lings Gretchen Wieners (Bebe Wood) and Karen Shet­ty (Avan­ti­ka) take a shine to the new girl, ush­er­ing her into their clique of school rulers. Along the way, Cady takes a shine to Aaron Samuels (Christo­pher Briney), but when Regi­na gets word the new kid has a crush on her ex, she decides to get back togeth­er with him. Cady, Janis and Damien all swear revenge on Regi­na, which com­pris­es a plan to: make her boyfriend dump her; make her friends turn against her; and – gasp – make her gain some weight.

While pur­port­ed­ly a refresh of the source mate­r­i­al for a new gen­er­a­tion, there’s lit­tle to sug­gest Tina Fey – writer of the orig­i­nal script and the remake – has done much research into the tri­als and tribu­la­tions of the lat­est grad­u­at­ing class oth­er than notic­ing they use Tik­Tok and like Bey­on­cé. Some of the orig­i­nal jokes have been altered (a ref­er­ence to Lady­smith Black Mam­bazo is changed to, er, Neil DeGrasse Tyson), per­haps in an attempt to appear more con­tem­po­rary or less unpleas­ant, but in the process, these mean girls end up sig­nif­i­cant­ly lack­ing the ​“mean”. The barbs aren’t sharp, the jabs don’t land, and it’s dif­fi­cult to believe that this is reflec­tive of cur­rent ado­les­cent behav­iour. Teenagers, after all, are incred­i­bly adept at find­ing new and inter­est­ing ways to be cru­el to one anoth­er. Not in this film it seems.

This tooth­less­ness wouldn’t be so appar­ent if the film’s gim­mick – its song and dance rou­tines – was com­pelling, but the for­get­table num­bers bleed into one anoth­er, none espe­cial­ly enter­tain­ing. If there’s one thing to be said for the cast, they’re ener­getic and clear­ly try­ing their best, but none have the charis­ma or comedic tim­ing which made Lohan et al such a delight to watch.

Of course film has an incred­i­ble uphill bat­tle on its hands to even come halfway to match­ing the charm of its pre­de­ces­sor, but it’s impos­si­ble to eval­u­ate Mean Girls on its own mer­it when it leans so heav­i­ly on the 2004 film, not just with rehashed jokes and watered-down recre­ations but with jar­ring meta ref­er­ences that don’t ful­ly com­mit. It is pos­si­ble to pull off the stealth reboot with a nudge and a wink (take a bow, High School Musi­cal: The Musi­cal: The Series) but Mean Girls can’t decide if it’s an homage, a satire, or some­thing else entire­ly. Even a late-game cameo from Lohan her­self can’t fill the charis­ma void, and the result is a teen movie with an iden­ti­ty crisis.

There’s fer­tile ground in the teen movie, and it’s entire­ly pos­si­ble that a Mean Girls reboot could have been as smart and sassy as the orig­i­nal was for mil­lenials, pro­vid­ing count­less memes and salient social wis­dom for younger view­ers, but its fail­ure to suf­fi­cient­ly carve out a new iden­ti­ty or to mean­ing­ful­ly pro­vide a fresh spin on the mate­r­i­al means there’s noth­ing to be gained from watch­ing this pale imi­ta­tion of a stone cold classic.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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