The original Mean Girls is…criminally overrated.
Now put down your pitchforks and listen.
It did a lot for a lot of people’s careers (It made Rachel McAdams a household name, it launched Amanda Seyfried to stardom, and it helped Lindsay Lohan
age out of her more Disney friendly roles). I would be lying if I said parts of it still didn’t make me chuckle, or that it didn’t have a massive chokehold on pop culture it is only loosened it’s grip on us. (I hate the October 3rd joke, I won’t lie. Though I hate many references to childhood on celebrities’ posts, but I think that’s a post for another day.) This all goes to say when the musical came out, I was well past my casually enjoys Mean Girls years and didn’t invest too much thought or time into it. I hadn’t even heard the soundtrack until the past few months, when I heard that the movie adaptation of the musical, simply titled Mean Girls in a slightly different font, was finally hitting theatres.
And while I didn’t love the Broadway musical, I could easily write that off as I was simply aged out of the demographic who would like it. This was a younger generations Mean Girls, and I think that was nice. It took a thing and made it new and different enough while still honoring the original. Yet somehow, the 2024 Mean Girls is a boring rehash of both the original and the musical with none of the ‘mean’ or bite.
Cady Heron (Angourie Rice) is a new student who has moved to the United States from Africa. She struggles to fit in, though quickly makes friends with artsy ‘outcasts’ Janis (Auli’i Cravalho) and Damian (Jaquel Spivey). Cady’s life turns upside down, however, when she befriends the Plastics, the most popular girls in school — dumb but hot Karen (Avantika Vandanapu-THE SAVING GRACE OF THIS FLOP), gossipy and neurotic Gretchen (Bebe Wood), and queen bee Regina George (Renee Rapp, who they do so dirty in this film), and is engulfed in revenge parties, regular parties, and the very haunting journey of being the most popular girl in school.
While I don’t love the original, it’s arguably very funny. Like I said, there are many things that still make me laugh. And on the other side of the spectrum, the original is also very mean. These girls are vicious, only slightly exaggerated versions of my own mean girl tormentors in high school. In particular, one of the meanest things they do in the original is spread a rumor that Janis, Regina’s former best friend, is a lesbian (Which is actually Regina misconstruing Janis telling her that she’s Lebanese — get it? Word play). This rumor makes Janis a social pariah. The musical, from everything I can research and gather, also has this plot point. The new film, however, makes Janis canonically gay (which hell, fine by me and always made sense), and instead the rumor they start is that she’s…a pyromaniac. This feels like something straight out of an iCarly episode. While they don’t have to make Janis be bullied for being mislabeled as gay, or for being gay, by giving her this goofy, cartoony arc instead, you already are kind of pulled out of the story of plausibility. It’s not every day that someone is accused of setting random fires when they just, objectively aren’t setting any fires. Janis herself has been tremendously de-fanged, with her and Cady enacting revenge on Regina by…getting her wet so her make up runs down her face. Again, how very Dan Schneider of you. This Mean Girls is drastically toned down and while it’s good they aren’t flinging slurs around and hate criming LGBTQ+ students, they can still be, you know, mean.
The singing also….oh, the singing.
Instead of belting power houses like in the Broadway show, this is very Tiktok (or Tiktok before they took the music down). Everything feels like Lana del Rey, or music made for Spotify. Rice, playing the lead, noticeably can’t sing, having a lot of her parts in songs cut or reworked entirely. The guy who plays her love interest Aaron (barely even worth a mention in the new one) has no songs at all. Renee Rapp, who played Regina in the original musical, has the volume cranked way down and feels like she has no power in her voice at all. Everything is autotuned, toned down, and made to sound like it was streaming on Soundcloud. Watching them mute Renee Rapp so the other singing doesn’t look bad in comparison is one of the worst parts, if not THE worst. Also Bebe as Gretchen is just bad casting, and they ruin the only song I do like from the musical (What’s Wrong with Me?) which is one of the easiest songs to sing, and yet…
Cravalho and Spivey are also fine — they sound the best with the singing and are energetic and fun, also having some of the few scenes that made me laugh. The problem with them, and almost every other character in this film, is that they really aren’t developed. These characters feel like 65% developed, with certain quirks to make them stand apart, but nothing to make them standout. They not only turn down the volume for Rapp’s singing, but also her acting — she’s barely even mean. She’s just kind of a bitch, dressing like Erica from Teen Wolf (that leather jacket outfit and the way they did her hair was so 2013).
The singing is flat and boring, but so are these characters — we learn really nothing about them besides what they exposition dump on us. Even their outfits are things that are trending on Tiktok, which defeats the purpose of the powerhouse Plastics: they are the ones setting the trends. They are the ones inspiring everyone with what to buy (The bra scene from the original?! THE CARGO PANTS AND FLIP FLOPS?! HELLO????) and how to dress. Having them pull knockoffs from a Tiktok shop is embarrassing and misses the entire point.
For someone who doesn’t like Mean Girls, this movie really gets under my skin.
On a positive note, their version of ‘Sexy’, Karen’s big song from the musical, is SO much better in the movie. Vandanapu is the best addition to this film — she fills the role perfectly while also adding her own spin to it. She is the only character that feels well written, and Vandanapu is so naturally charismatic and funny, you can’t help but to love her. Much like in the original film, Cady has her plans blow up in her face and everyone turn on her. Unlike in the original film, however, Karen continues to be Cady’s friend, passing her a note that is so horribly misspelled but such an attempt at encouragement, it made me laugh out loud. And it also made me wish we were watching a movie that followed Karen around — I think things would actually be interesting from her perspective.
Without Karen and Vandanapu’s amazing portrayal, we are left with Mean Girls with no mean and very underdeveloped girls. Without those things, it’s just boring music you would skip on Spotify and…fires. And sprinklers.
And much like the songs on Spotify, I would skip this film and just watch the original. Or find a Karen highlight video, she’s the best.