1.5 out of 5 Burn Books (One of the Worst of the year)
I’d comfortably call 2004’s Mean Girls one of my favorite teen comedies. Written by Tina Fey, the film won audiences over with its clever, mean-spirited humor, endearing cast of characters, and sincerity in delivering the message that putting others down doesn’t raise you up. I also love Broadway musicals for their theatricality and song numbers bolstered by a good story. Therefore, it brings me immeasurable pain to say that 20 years later, Mean Girls is back on the big screen, this time an adaptation of the Broadway musical, and with one small exception, I despise its existence with every fiber of my being. Obnoxious musical numbers, a bizarre lack of energy, and a sanding off of any of the edge that made its original stand out leaves this Mean Girls a plastic, unfunny disaster that is currently 2024’s worst film. I Dare other movies this year to stoop lower.
The story here is largely the same (minus the absence of small but important character scenes and our lead’s father): Homeschooled teen Cady (Angourie Rice, Honor Society and the MCU Spider-Man films) has just moved stateside with her mom (Jenna Fischer) and experiences the culture shock that is High School. Soon befriended by the eclectic Janis (Auli’i Cravalho) and snarky Damien (Jaquel Spivey), Cady learns of the school’s Queen Bee, HBIC Regina George (Renee Rapp reprising her role from the Broadway show) and her yes-ladies: attention-desperate Gretchen (Bebe Wood) and cartoonishly idiotic Karen (Avantika Vandanapu). Janis and Damien want to take Regina down a peg, so they convince Cady to fall in with her clique, only for Cady to start losing herself in the process.
While Mean Girls 2024 is a cinematic trainwreck, I still believe in giving credit where it’s due. Auli’i Cravalho (most known for voicing the title character in Disney’s Moana) has an appealing singing voice and feels most comfortable with the choreography of the musical numbers. Regina George’s final villain song employs some nice red mood lighting when it starts and the number is well-sung by Rapp (who you may also recognize from The Sex Lives of College Girls) and 3 or 4 lines elicited a “heh” out of me. Now for the rest of the film.
Mean Girls 2024 should be studied in how Not to make a musical. The song lyrics are nothing short of dreadful and the cast outside of Cravalho and Rapp cannot sing and struggle with the choreography (particularly lead Rice, who the material renders disarmingly bland here). While a meaner individual than I might put all the blame on first time directors Samantha Jayne and Arturo Perez, Jr., Martin Scorsese would have to make a deal with the Devil himself to churn this script into something good. The camera angles often feel awkward (our first shot of Regina is her neck through her nose while she sings her first song, Rice being told to put her entire face in the camera during a different number, and actors not having enough headroom in the shot). Again, directors can only work with the script they’re given, and unfortunately for Jayne and Perez, Jr., this one’s a wet dog.
Speaking of that script, most of the original film’s dialogue is repeated verbatim here, but this time with poor delivery that eliminates the comedic impact it once had and the scrubbing of Every Single Joke that had even the slightest whiff of biting edge. The story doesn’t so much flow as much as casually strut through plot points without any care for pacing, alienating newcomers as to why this was worth remaking in the first place. Small details and little scenes in the original that fleshed out the characters have been detrimentally excised here and everyone’s characterizations have been dumbed down to a single trait exaggerated to the extreme (Busy Phillips as Regina George’s awful “cool mom” especially grates). The most head-bangingly awful omission is Cady’s narration, which not only offered the original film a satirical lens (high school as a wild jungle), but also helped us see the world through Cady’s eyes and understand her motivations. Removing that element leaves poor Rice with very little to play and makes Cady an unengaging lead throughout (and no, adding in songs where she sings about being comfortable with math but not love is in no way a suitable replacement). Worse still, she and love interest actor Christopher Briney have as much romantic chemistry as you and your iPod nano from 2006. Renee Rapp is excellent on The Sex Lives of College Girls and may be a fantastic Regina George onstage, but here lacks the wonderfully snakelike charm her character should have.
The film is also loaded with topical references and buzzwords (Damien refers to “hetero allyship” and sings the ICarly theme song in French and TikTok videos are used to show how the student body is reacting to everything, among other instances). It’s clear these gags are an attempt to engage new teen viewers and the constant dialogue verbatim from the original to hit my generation via nostalgia, but the teen girls behind me barely reacted to anything and spent much of the film on their phones, so mission failed. The cherry on top is that the original film’s message of how cruel teens can be to each other that was delivered naturally as the story progressed before is now literally lectured to us by narrators Janis and Damien like we’re neanderthals. That Tina Fey wrote this script (and reprises her role, along with Tim Meadows) makes me sad because I Know Fey can tell this story well and question if she still understands why we loved it all those years ago.
As much as the very existence of Mean Girls 2024 angers me, I spent much of it feeling bad for everyone involved. I’ve seen many of these people be good or great elsewhere and hope their next projects showcase that talent. I hope the directors took this film as a learning experience and wish them and their crew the best in their future careers. That said, Mean Girls 2024 is an obnoxious insult to a classic that can’t sit with us on this or any day of the week. Go see The Color Purple musical instead if it’s still playing near you. This is just a plastic retread.
Rated PG-13 for Please God Give Me My Money Back