Ruthlessly funny and endlessly memeable, 2004’s Mean Girls is right at the twisted heart of the teen movie canon. This fun-but-timid musical reboot doesn’t have much hope of upstaging its sharper older sister, but it’s an enjoyable retread for anyone who doesn’t mind seeing this cattiest of films getting declawed.
You can almost smell its creators’ damp-armpitted nervousness as they navigate 2024’s woker sensibilities: the cast is newly diverse and the script treads more lightly that the original, which hammered out jokes skewering teens’ ignorant stereotypes of Africa, fat shaming, and gay panic. In this Gen Z high school, the threat of getting mocked online is much, much scarier than an acid putdown in the corridors. Accordingly, the story’s beats are the same but they land differently: some are fumbled (the cringey attempted internet-speak of ‘I’m a cool mom with six 0s #besties’ just doesn’t hit the same), some are freshly hilarious (fawning Karen describes queen bee Regina’s pimple as ‘sexy – it’s like a face breast’). And everything’s heightened by a punchy-but-underused score of songs plucked straight from the hit 2018 Broadway ‘Mean Girls’ musical.
Reneé Rapp’s performance as super-mean Regina is a highlight here, as she fills this high school tyrant with near-demonic levels of evil charisma. She’s got a great voice too, showcased in her barnstorming rock number ‘World Burn’. New girl Cady is no match for her: The Nice Guys’ Angourie Rice is Lindsay Lohan’s nerdier, sweeter and less compelling successor in the role, a socially awkward alien trying and failing to fit in.
It’s an enjoyable retread if you don’t mind seeing this cattiest of films getting declawed
Thankfully, she gets schooled by sharp-tongued outsiders Janis and Damian (Auli’i Cravalho and Jaquel Spivey are fantastically good value as these oh-so-queer rebels) who urge her into this school’s mean girl elite. Soon, she’s singing about being ‘filled with calculust’ in maths class in lovably bouncy number ‘Stupid With Love’, but her crush sets her on collision course with her frenemy Regina.
So many moments in Mean Girls sing, thanks to screenwriter Tina Fey’s retooled jokes, the glitzy pink aesthetics and the young cast giving it their all. But the songs themselves? They feel weirdly sidelined here. Co-directors Samantha Jayne and Arturo Perez Jr seem unsure how to stage them, falling back endlessly on the device that they’re being filmed for TikTok, big emotions trammelled for a small screen. It’s almost like Mean Girls is embarassed of being a musical. Much like Wonka, the marketing has downplayed its jazz hands-leanings, with only a tiny music note on the movie poster to hint at what audiences are getting here.
But as any aspiring teen mean girl knows, bashfulness gets you nowhere when it comes to popularity. 2024’s Mean Girls needed to be loud, full-throated and unashamed to steal the original’s glittering plastic tiara: instead, it’s an enjoyable exercise in nostalgia that won’t win too many superfans of its own.
In US theaters now and UK cinemas Feb 19.