This Film IS For:
- Fans of the original who are looking to feel old and question their own mortality
- Those who can set aside a lack of innovation to enjoy musical numbers
This Film is NOT For:
- Anyone who expected Hollywood to have an original idea or innovate on a classic
Brief Review With Minor Spoilers
Mean Girls (2024) joins an eclectic group of films that tried to disguise the fact that they were a musical until the last second (looking at you, Sweeney Todd). Fortunately, the best parts of this movie are the musical numbers. Mean Girls shines when it distances itself from its source material, but unfortunately, it doesn’t do it enough. Granted, this is a film based on a Broadway musical based on a film, so we’re three layers into remake inception at this point. Maybe I was expecting too much, but at the end of the day, this movie left me longing for the original cast and I almost turned it off several times to watch the 2004 classic.
Starting with the good, Mean Girls has songs that are catchy as hell with some great choreography (the house party scene is particularly good). These numbers and songs are the best part of the movie as they are a fresh take on the story—at least for someone who hasn’t seen the Broadway play (because that shit is expensive). Unfortunately, the film stumbles just about everywhere else. Scenes between songs feel like they are less a reimagining and more copied homework. Lines are clipped verbatim from the original Mean Girls down to tone and delivery. There was an opportunity to update a classic for a modern generation that was missed here in a big way.
I came in wanting to see something closer to 21 Jump Street, which took an old concept and plopped it in the middle of a high school culture that was very different from when it was originally created. Mean Girls could have and should have played more into social media tropes than it did. Yes, everyone in the film has hints of being terminally online, but the way that it’s mentioned feels throwaway and doesn’t really capture the cultural impact. For me, this left much of the film feeling like a sterile cash grab.
Performances were ok all around in the sense that they were overacted to the point where I could almost believe these whole-ass adults were high schoolers. Jaquel Spivey as Damian and Auli’I Cravalho as Janis were immediate standouts. These two felt like they paid homage to the characters that came before them but also took them in fresh new directions. I found myself delighted anytime they were on screen and missing them when they weren’t. Unfortunately, the cast playing The Plastics all felt too generic, which might come from casting singers first, and actors second. None of the performances felt distinct enough and it left me longing for Rachel McAdams and… yes even Lindsay Lohan.
Overall, I enjoyed this film mostly for its music. If I had seen the Broadway show, maybe I’d feel differently. While a few characters evolved from the original, most were hollow copies. I’ll recommend this to fans of musicals and the original Mean Girls with all the caveats I mentioned above. It was a good time, but not one I’ll be revisiting outside of listening to the soundtrack on Spotify.
2.5/5 – This film can’t sit with us.
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