Mean Girls hits theaters everywhere on January 12.
By Elazar Abrahams
This is less a standard, professional review of the new Mean Girls than it is a loose rant of the ways in which it disappoints. The adaptation of the Broadway musical, itself a retelling of the classic 2004 teen flick, has made its way to theaters twenty years after audiences first entered the halls of Northshore High.
Perhaps it’s unfair to judge this movie against the previous two versions, but by xeroxing its best and only redeeming qualities from the original, it invites those critiques upon itself.
Starting with one positive, the young cast is absolutely stellar, and their names should be on every casting director’s lips. Reneé Rapp as Regina George is obviously great, and Auli’l Cravalho and Jaquel Spivey really carry the movie as Janice and Damien. Christopher Briney is passable as heartthrob Aaron Samuels. Truly, the only weak link is Angourie Rice, who seems like she’s sleepwalking through her lead role as Cady Heron.
Now, when adapting a seminal work, I understand the want to put a new spin on the story, and surely Mean Girls — both the original film and the Broadway show — are far from untouchable. So first-time directors Samantha Jayne and Arturo Perez Jr. want to make their mark on the property, fine. It’s only natural. But they’ve been given a winning playbook, proven to work. A playbook that could bring them to the championship if they follow its outline. Just run the damn plays! There is not one change made in this version that makes the movie better as a result.
Changing the lyric “This is modern feminism talking, I expect to run the world in shoes I cannot walk in” to “watch me as I run the world in shoes I cannot walk in” exemplifies the problem with this movie. It has no edge, no bite. No longer can Gretchen welp, “You can’t join the Mathletes, that’s social suicide!” She now must say, “That’s socially ruinous!” Regina, the supposed ‘queen of beasts,’ can no longer devastate Janice by calling her a “space dyke.” Yes, the D-word is a horrid slur that no one should be using. That’s exactly the point. The Plastics are BULLIES. They are, as is right there in the title, MEAN girls. Depicting insults on screen does not equal an endorsement of that behavior. The list goes on. Where in the musical, Regina crooned, “I’m the prettiest poison you’ve ever seen / I never weigh more than 115,” she now sings, “That filter you use looks just like me,” because heaven forbid a high school tyrant bring up body image. Who exactly are these edits for? The end result is a sandpapered-down remake that suffers from the antagonists not being nasty enough. It should be titled Slightly Rude Girls.
While the politically correct lyric alterations are frustrating, they don’t affect the quality of the movie as much as cutting many tracks from the Broadway production altogether does. The stage show has about 22 songs, and the movie has cut that down to 12, in addition to changing the composer’s arrangements to sound more pop and rock, and the remaining ditties are sparsely well-integrated into the scenes. It totally ruins the motifs that were present in the show; for example, Cady’s declaration of “we’re all stars” in the final number does not land emotionally when you’ve trashed her earlier performance ‘More is Better,’ in which she explains that she misses how many stars there were at night before she moved to America. Nor does ‘Apex Predator’ hit in the same way it would have if the original opening song ‘It Roars’ had been preserved, where the production explicitly compares the students to the different animals on the savannah.
Several other things are lost in translation here. Gretchen and Karen’s introduction in ‘Meet the Plastics’ has been cut, and a strange alteration in ‘I’d Rather Be Me’ has ramifications for Janice. While still a show-stopping number that Cravalho absolutely slays, it now takes place as her character runs around the school music video style instead of in the gym, where the rest of the girls can hear her rousing speech of individuality and chant her name in droves. It robs Janice of a truly defining moment. Again, changes to the original source material are fine, but these changes do not make for a better Mean Girls by any metric.
Half-assing a musical won’t make a movie appeal to people who hate musicals. It only serves to alienate those who would have happily supported this.
The original 2004 movie is revered not only for its sharp sense of humor and showcasing of the teen experience but also because it is a wickedly smart satire and character study. Cady’s climb to the top of the social pyramid and the ways in which she, too, is driven by the lust for popularity is key to understanding Mean Girls. As such, on stage, during her first time hanging out of school with the Plastics, Cady sings the lines, “and though Janice is great, she does not have this power / People literally cower, Janice can’t do that,” teasing the beginnings of her turn in motivation, and toying with the idea of leaving Janice behind. In the new movie, that verse is delivered by Damien while he and Janice watch the hangout from the bushes. Why on earth would Damien be saying that? The change only exists to absolve Cady of any hint of moral complexity.
By refusing to critique or damn any of its characters, this remake feels empty, cheap, and yes, plastic.
I give Mean Girls a C.
TV and City 