Review Of Mean Girls: the 2004 smash comedy by Mark Waters about the wild jungle of high school cliques, featured enough instantly recognizable dialogue and endearing characters to become a touchstone for the generation in or just out of their teens as well as those who have discovered it since. Under the direction of screenwriter Tina Fey, the property made the transition from film to Broadway musical in 2018 while retaining many of its original attractions, some of which were strengthened by the magical expressiveness of characters who spontaneously burst into songs that divulge their inner lives.
The show's utilitarian songs, written by Fey's husband Jeff Richmond, were never going to keep Stephen Sondheim up at night. However, director-choreographer Casey Nicholaw's skill with dynamic showmanship and Nell Benjamin's often-clever lyrics made for an electrifying performance filled with hormonal insecurity, malice, vulnerability, and hard-won life lessons. It also didn't hurt to have an excellent cast.
However, the substance in this laborious reincarnation—a movie musical created by individuals who seem to know nothing about movie-musical lingo—has lost all of its energy and joy. Samantha Jayne and Arturo Perez Jr., who are co-directing this film for the first time, are most recognized for their work together on the FX shortform series Quarter Life Poetry. However, Perez's experience with music videos is evident in their jerky work here. Kyle Hanagami, the choreographer, is in the same boat.
The songs don't usually flow naturally from the narrative; instead, they are frequently so painfully forced in that you start to detest them. Even worse, the soundtrack is so painfully overproduced and studio-enhanced that you are unable to enjoy the joy of hearing folks sing on their own. That's a deal-breaker in terms of musical shortcomings. The creative team's choice to use social media to promote the music whenever feasible is the last straw. The device is used so much that you begin to question why the entire film wasn't created on TikTok. Perhaps it wouldn't look quite as tacky on a smartphone.
I wish I could claim that the cast made up for it, but Auli'i Cravalho, who portrayed the punk outsider Janis in Lizzy Caplan's original film, is the only one who shows up long enough to really stand out.
The greatest letdown is perhaps Regina George, who was so magnificently portrayed by Rachel McAdams in the 2004 film and by Taylor Louderman on Broadway that the name itself has come to represent a wicked adolescent queen—a young lady who is as stunningly beautiful as she is vile. In the second year of the show's run in New York, Reneé Rapp took over the part, which she has since repeated here in the, let's face it, not-so-great tradition of mid-twentieth-century film high school students.
With a pink glow around her, Regina looked almost otherworldly as she entered each scene on stage like a Bond vixen. Here, she's mean but rarely humorous, which may be a reflection of the way society has changed and made it more difficult to make lighthearted bullying jokes. The songs that made Regina the musical's arch-villain have been reduced to corny hymns of superiority and self-love, so muddled by a ruthlessly homogenized pop sound mix that half of her lyrics are unclear.
The narrative strikes all the expected notes. The move of Cady Heron (Angourie Rice) from the African savanna to the wilds of North Shore High is rather jarring for her because her mother (Jenna Fischer) has been homeschooling her in Kenya. The two students who steadfastly refuse to participate in the school's strict caste structure, Janis and her "almost too gay to function" closest friend Damian (Jaquel Spivey, the gifted star of A Strange Loop on Broadway), give her a 101 introduction to the system.
They advise her to avoid "The Plastics," a group of three people made up of Regina and her goons, Gretchen (Bebe Wood) and Karen (Avantika), who Janis and Damian have called "shiny, fake, and hard." However, Janis and Damian see it as an opportunity to gather some dirt on the cruel girls when Regina shows interest in Cady, albeit a potentially manipulative one, and invites her to lunch.
When Cady starts to feel a crush on her mathematics classmate Aaron (Christopher Briney), who happens to be Regina's ex, her spy assignment gets problematic. Regina grabs Aaron back because she can at a Halloween party where Cady's corpse bride costume makes her the odd one out ("If you don't dress slutty, you're slut-shaming the rest of us," Gretchen informs her). As a result, Cady, Janis, and Damian get together to plot a retaliation, but Cady becomes so completely ingrained in The Plastics that she starts to lose her identity.
Although Australian actress Rice does a good job portraying the initially self-centered Cady, none of the characters are defined enough to make you forget about their sharper predecessors. Having a significant 2004 Mean Girls actress make a lengthy cameo simply helps to highlight how much more subversiveness, wit, and heart the original and its amazing ensemble possessed. This drab treatment scarcely warms up the astute examination of adolescent angst, social hierarchies, peer pressure, feminine toxicity, and power dynamics found in the previous film. Maybe the 20-year-old content is simply a little bit out of date?
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