“If it ain‘t broke, don’t fix it” is the spirit animal of Mean Girls, 2024, pretty much the same exact movie as the iconic classic from twenty years ago … but with music! That’s not a bad thing, necessarily. When I think of the films that adequately describe high school clique behavior in America, I think of Mean Girls and Heathers … and that’s it. The scathingly sharp Lindsay Lohan magnum opus became the iconic high school film for at least a decade following. And for good reason; Mean Girls 2004 became the Breakfast Club for a new generation.
So they made the same film, only with music. And like Waitress and Color Purple already out within the past month, this Mean Girls is a film adaptation of a musical stage adaptation of an original music-less film. Clearly, the next stage in this cycle is to remove the music and go back to the stage so that it all starts over again.
The premise is simple: a home-schooled innocent noob shows up in an average American high school and -after mild hazing- immediately falls in with the wrong crowd. In this case, the “wrong crowd” isn’t the stoners, rebels, or marching band, but “The Plastics,” a clique of ultra-powerful Mean Girls who run the school’s social endeavors, the film’s message being a simple: don’t stare into the abyss because the abyss stares back. [thank you, Nietzsche]
Cady Heron (Angourie Rice) actually befriends two others before she becomes one of the Mean Girls, but I’m getting ahead of myself. First, I would be a jerk not to mention the casting coup of a lifetime … Angourie Rice resembles a teenage Jenna Fischer. The look is so uncanny I half-expected Ms. Rice to greet every mean girl-ism with an anxious-faced turn to stare at the camera. And, lo and behold, who plays the senior Ms. Heron but Jenna Fischer! Well done, casting. Well done.
Daunted by high school idiocy, Cady is befriended by the mini- LGBTQ+ contingent of Janis and Damien (Auli’I Cravalho and Jaquel Spivey). And when Queen Bee Regina George (Reneé Rapp) summons hard case Cady to The Plastics table at lunch, Janis encourages the friendship, secretly hoping Cady 
will undermine The Plastics from within. Honestly, you could set this film in 2004, 2024, 1954, 1924, or 2124 and the plot would still hold. Mean Girls are never not a thing; that’s why the original is a classic.
Tina Fey revised her 2004 screenplay for this one. Far as I can tell, all she did was add a French teacher and lose the jailbait sub-sub-plot. The Christmas number also doesn’t work as well because everyone in the cast can sing and there’s nothing for Cady to save when disaster arrives, which is a shame, because we want to like Cady even when we see her transform into one of the Mean Girls.
The music in Mean Girls is a true positive. Cady’s solo admission “Stupid with Love” (less the calculus lyrics) could be honesty sung by 80% of high schoolers. “Revenge Party” and “I’d Rather Be Me” are both classic empowerment songs, but for entirely different reasons. Bottom line is this story is a classic, the music is good, and I’m happy with the modern additions for diversity purposes. In other words, I might just love this movie … if I hadn’t already seen it. And given that Mean Girls 2024 is deliberately a clone of Mean Girls 2004, I see no reason to pelt it with excessive praise.
There once was transfer named Cady
A right proper endearing young lady
But her modesty bowed
Mixing with the in crowd
And now all her motivations are shady
Rated PG-13, 112 Minutes
Director: Samantha Jayne, Arturo Perez Jr.
Writer: Tina Fey
Genre: High School Musical
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Did you like the first one?
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: Unreformed mean girls
