‘Mean Girls’ review: high school musical reboot is no match for the original

Though it’s now nearly 20 years old, the original Mean Girls remains a pop culture touchstone. It’s not just one of the funniest teen films of its era, but also one of the most quotable. Many of its iconic lines – including “that’s so fetch” and “on Wednesdays we wear pink” – also appear in the new Mean Girls movie, sandwiched between song and dance numbers that the trailers have downplayed. That’s because this Mean Girls is based on the hit Broadway musical of the same name, which is itself based on the original 2004 film. These days in Hollywood, nothing is easier to green light than IP with a ready-made fanbase.

Tina Fey returns as screenwriter, and also reprises her role as Ms Norbury, the high school maths teacher who is wrongly accused of being a “drug pusher” in one of the story’s odder subplots. Always a sharp operator, Fey has chopped the somewhat problematic jokes from her 2004 screenplay and replaced them with zingers that fly in today’s hyper-self-aware climate. When Cady Heron (Angourie Rice) rocks up at a Halloween party looking scary rather than sexy, her friend Gretchen Wieners (Bebe Wood) scolds her with the faux-feminist reproach: “Cady, if you don’t dress slutty, you’re slut-shaming us.”

This film’s narrative arc cleaves pretty closely to the original. Unassuming Cady arrives at North Shore High after a spell being homeschooled in Kenya, then befriends lively outsiders Janis (Auliʻi Cravalho) and Damian (Jaquel Spivey) – who is still, fans will be glad to know, “too gay to function”. When bitchy queen bee Regina George (Reneé Rapp) invites Cady to join “The Plastics”, her A-list clique that also comprises insecure Gretchen and dimwitted Karen Shetty (a scene-stealing Avantika), Cady grabs the opportunity to act as a double agent. She’ll pretend to be a “Plastic” while relaying all the nasty and vacuous things they say to her real friends, Janis and Damian. That is, of course, until the glamour and popularity of being a Plastic goes to Cady’s head and she hatches a plan to take down Regina.

Husband and wife directing duo Samantha Jayne and Arturo Perez Jr. frame the musical numbers as social media content, which feels both contemporary and a little apologetic – as if that’s the only way a Gen Z audience will fully accept them. It doesn’t help that the songs are solid rather than spectacular, though Rapp really sells her Billie Eilish-like bop ‘Someone Gets Hurt’. Her Regina is never quite as ruthless as Rachel McAdams’ 2004 iteration, just as Rice’s Cady lacks the conniving glint that Lindsay Lohan brought to the role. The result is a film that’s more rehash than remodel, albeit a perfectly entertaining one. Where the original Mean Girls had the sparky, snarky confidence of Regina George, this one is more like Gretchen Wieners: less sure of itself, a bit try-hard, but ultimately quite likeable.

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