Mean Girls: Musical update recaptures original’s spirit, while adding extra flair

Friday, 19 January 2024

Mean Girls is now screening in cinemas nationwide.

Mean Girls (M, 113mins)

Directed by Samantha Jayne and Arturo Perez Jr.

****

Twenty years after its debut, Tiny Fey’s cinematic adaptation of Rosalind Wiseman’s 2002 book Queen Bees and Wannabes rightly remains one of the most beloved and cultural significant teen movies of the noughties.

In some ways, it has got better with age – an insightful high school comedy that initially appeared specifically designed to ride the wave of Lindsay Lohan-mania that swept the globe at the time now provides a fascinating look back at the then nascent talents of a trio of today’s top performers – Rachel McAdams, Amanda Seyfried and Lizzy Caplan.

So, was a remake necessary? Especially one that takes the Hairspray/The Producers approach of reinventing the story with songs – and, in this case, without the safety net of having a period setting?

I mean, even the marketers have gone to seemingly great lengths to hide the fact that this is, whisper it, “a musical”, even though we know one has existed – on Broadway – since 2018.

Jaquel Spivey, Angourie Rice and Auli’i Cravalho join forces in Mean Girls.

Well, this much more diversely populated, self-reflexive, but still biting social satire is the finger-snapping, toe-tapping, all-singing, all-dancing update that today’s social-media obsessed teens deserve.

And don’t get me wrong, it’s also a hell of a lot of fun for both Millennials and Generation Xers like myself.

While some may bemoan certain changes and characters constantly breaking into song, as well as the 25 extra minutes of running-time compared to the original (although this is more than half-an-hour shorter than the stage show), there’s no denying this both recaptures the spirit of the 2004 edition and adds a little more nuance, texture and flair.

Key to both is the retention of Fey as the sole writer. While making the parents and teachers (including her own character, maths teacher Ms. Norbury) more peripheral, she has managed to skilfully update the teens’ social conundrums, while still including the main story beats that made the Millennial Mean Girls so memorable and adding in some killer song lyrics (“This is modern feminism talking, I expect to run the world in shoes I cannot walk in,” Avantika’s scene-stealing Karen Shetty sings during Sexy, her love letter to delights of dressing up for Halloween).

There might be less of Tina Fey’s Ms. Norbury in this Mean Girls, but the actor’s screenwriting skills are key to the update’s success.

She’s one of the many relative unknowns who make up the fabulous Mean Girls class of 2024, one headed by the charismatic Australian actor Angourie Rice (Spider Man: Homecoming, Mare of Easttown), who certainly enhances her already impressive CV here, and that showcases the talents of Renee Rapp (The Sex Lives of College Girls), Jaquel Spivey and Moana herself, Auli’i Cravalho.

The latter pair play artistic duo Damian Hubbard and Janis ‘Imi’ike, our guides to this “cautionary tale of fear, lust and pride..that’s about corruption, betrayal and getting hit by a bus”, as well as self-appointed social advisers for North Shore High School newbie Cady Heron (Rice).

Formerly home-schooled by her scientist solo mom (Busy Phillips) in Africa, Cady is excited by her first day on campus.

However, any confidence soon evaporates, as she struggles to find her tribe and finds herself eating lunch on the toilet. That’s where she’s found by Damian and Janis and quickly schooled in the institutions’ various cliques.

To their horror though, Cady catches the eye of “apex predator” Regina George (Rapp), who invites her to sit down with her and the two other members – Avantika’s Shetty and Bebe Wood’s Gretchen Wieners – of what Damian and Janis describe as “The Plastics”. “They’re shiny, fake and hard,” they explain as the reason for the seemingly bizarre moniker.

This much more diversely populated, self-reflexive, but still biting social satire is the finger-snapping, toe-tapping, all-singing, all-dancing update of Mean Girls that today’s social-media obsessed teens deserve.

Despite such warnings and some arbitrary rules (they wear pink on Wednesdays and ponytails are allowed only once a week), Cady takes up the offer to join them, convincing Janice that she’ll simply be there to get all the goss and report back.

However, not only does being in Regina’s orbit prove to be intoxicating and seductive, Cady finds herself distracted by fellow maths student Aaron Samuels (The Summer I Turned Pretty’s Christopher Briney), even when Gretchen convinces her that he is off-limits because he’s Regina’s ex. Although, when Regina eventually learns of Cady’s interest, she makes the surprising offer to help.

Featuring plenty of hilarious callbacks to and riffs on the original tale (a character is convinced that the, then, zeitgeisty word “fetch” was slang “from an old movie, Juno I think”), as well as a delightful cameo from a Mean Girls OG, this also offers a clutch of memorable tunes, from the iCarly theme tune sung in French to the especially written (Oscar-baiting, no doubt), upbeat opening number What Ifs, the Bond-esque Apex Predator, the heartfelt Stupid with Love and the anthemic I’d Rather Be Me.

But while somehow managing to make cinematic lightning strike twice and provide a brilliant showcase for yet another troupe of young performers, it’s Fey who brings the house down with just a single note that’s almost worth the price of admission alone.

Mean Girls is now screening in cinemas nationwide.