My daughter (eight years old) has a habit of watching the same movie on repeat a hundred times before moving on to a new hyperfocus. Like most parents of Gen Alpha, I've seen Frozen and Frozen 2 more times than I can count. I know the Boss Baby well - from the big screen, the Netflix series, and the sequel. Bluey ran in the background every day for months. I thought I might stroke out at the CocoMelon chime for a minute there. Countless shows and movies I never invested too much in because they didn't interest me in the slightest filled the space between.
Her latest fixation is Mean Girls - the musical adaptation from 2024. Now, I grew up in the heyday of the original Mean Girls; early 2000's high school immediately reflected my daily life. Janis represented the too-cool-artsy-girl (like the one I had a huge crush on who sat behind me in Spanish class), and Regina George was the classic Frenemy, of which I'd had more than my fair share of. It was exaggerated, to be sure, but I knew many girls who weaponized their friendships, boyfriends, looks, etc. One girl in particular - who shall remain nameless - was someone who took me under her proverbial wing after seventh grade; she was someone I saw as part of "the popular group" (our version of The Plastics), and why she decided to essentially adopt me that summer, I will never know.
I'm not sure why it surprised me when she spent nearly every minute complaining or gossiping about the other popular folks who I idolized. But it hit a low I couldn't have imagined when she came over and hacked into one of those "friend's" email accounts; she'd watched her log in the week before and noticed it was a simple password. That girl had no problem logging in, reading personal messages with the rest of the clique, and marking those emails as 'unread'. She encouraged me to do the same - and I did, once or twice, but my conscience won out. I decided being a social pariah like I'd been my whole life was better than the sinking gut of guilt for doing something unquestionably wrong.
Needless to say, when I saw Mean Girls, I appreciated the candid way it represented the complex relationships between young women and how we are often each others' worst enemies in our formative years. The reality of bullying was still fresh in my mind back then, and it stuck with me all these years.
My kid's enjoyment of Mean Girls started with a re-watch of the old classic, a nauseating afternoon trying to get through the bomb of a sequel, and finished with the musical version on streaming. I'd heard about the Broadway show a few years ago, and though I grew up a theater nerd, it wasn't something on my radar. I watched the movie like my daughter did - with mostly fresh eyes and ears.
The movie opens with a great duet by Janis (Auli'i Cravalho) and Damian (Jaquel Spivey). Immediately, I'm intrigued. Their voices are crystal clear, strong, and the music is catchy. Honestly, the first time my kid put the movie on, I missed when she'd selected it, so I wasn't certain what we were watching - yet the lyrics to that first song tipped me off (the mention of someone being hit by a bus, of course). I thought it set the stage appropriately for jumping into the story right away.
We meet Cady (Angourie Rice) in an African field, singing...very quietly. Like, too quietly. Turned on the captions. Still couldn't hear it. Coming from the powerhouse song we'd just come from, I waited for the star of our show to arrive, and she peeped like a mouse instead. The last line she sings before the dialogue begins--I don't wanna live with 'what-if's'--is practically mumbled and has very little heart.
Admittedly, my critique of Cady is largely driven by two things: 1) My familiarity (to the word) of her original character and Lindsay Lohan's performance, and 2) The fact I've watched this movie about fifteen times in the past month, so I've had a lot of time to pick it apart. I don't want to come down hard on the actress herself - while she is clearly not a powerhouse singer, these choices might not have been hers and rest more with the director, so I will discuss the film with character names instead of performers.
The fact the dialogue between Cady and her mother is a little stilted can be forgiven - we have to get to the point. Get to the school. Get Cady to America. Being an avid fan of the original, though, I felt the last line of her intro song comes across really heavy-handed--My limit doesn't exist--as anyone who recalls anything about OG Mean Girls will know how that plays into the third act's solution.
Cady's adoption into Janis and Damian's small circle is very abrupt. There's barely a little bit of friendly banter amongst them before they interrupt her "lunch in the bathroom stall" time (which isn't repeated at the end for the effect it was played for in the original). It does come across a little forced, and since OG Cady's story is so close-in with a first-person POV, we really get a sense of Cady's want to make friends, so she gloms onto Janis and Damian because they are the first to be really nice to her. They introduce her to school life as she knows it, and they're interesting enough to keep her wanting to impress them. In the musical's on-screen version, Janis seems to question bringing her into the fold of their group by hesitating when Cady asks to sit with her at lunch--a choice that, I feel, undermines Janis's want to pull her out of the bathroom stall in the first place.
We meet the Plastics in a more rushed fashion than how Cady originally observed them during gym class. This "outside looking in" perspective gives her some space to admire and be curious about them. We aren't told about how Regina's "a massive deal" - we see it in real time with how she's worshiped by the other students in class. In this musical version, there's a proverbial earthquake when Regina comes into the room and sings about herself.
Now, I know Regina George is the villain. That's because we're told she is the villain. Not before we meet her, though. This has become something like a pop culture plot hole - we know Regina George is 'The Mean Girl', so the movie musical doesn't bother to set this up for a new audience. But my big issue with Regina George in this version is that her singing voice is SO spectacular, she immediately has me hooked. My attention is fully on Regina.
This means I could not give half a crap about Cady. Who is Cady? Why do I care about Cady, again? She isn't singing like this downright pop star who sounds out of place compared to the other Broadway-style singers in her wake. Regina is poised to be someone you care about. And this made me giddy at first - hell yeah, Regina is going to be SO MEAN in this version because she has so much power already.
Then she talks. She has the right look, and her acting isn't poor at all, but she's under-served by the unchanged dialogue that calls back too much to the OG (highlighted by Gretchen's near-identical cadence with her repeat lines). Cady responds to her just as meekly as ever - and it doesn't read as genuine. She's not awestruck by Regina in a way that feels authentic, and there is no reason why Cady wouldn't just absorb herself into Regina's clique and completely ignore Janis from that moment forward, because she hasn't spent more time with Janis to that point than she has with Regina given the movie's run time.
Cady's immediate fall for Aaron comes across as doubly cheesy because of her song, "Stupid With Love". The corny lyrics likely play very well on stage because I can imagine the lead being very animated and loud - like a truly nerdy girl would be - especially with lyrics like, "I am filled with calcu-lust"...there should be emphasis there, no? It's missing in the movie musical. I find myself tuning out what she is saying and eventually sing along "I didn't get it" just like she does. The weakness of this song is only emphasized when it has a reprisal during the school dance/Mathletes competition scene with a different singer really belting it.
Our exposé of Regina as the "Apex Predator" (which is a great song, btw) makes sense when compared to the equivalent mall sequence. The first trip to Regina's home feels awkward trying to make Busy Phillips' character fit in the void left by Amy Poehler (it doesn't come across as funny at all like the OG...just kind of pathetic). The "reveal" of the Burn Book is too inorganic and forced. If it's something the girls would even think about bringing up again MONTHS later when Cady is whining about Ms. Nordbury (weakly described thus - "Like a drug pusher?" "I don't know...she's so weird" instead of the compelling and more realistic "Probably...she said she has three jobs!") it would be something they themselves find - - and definitely not something Regina throws on the ground as "that stupid babyish book" as she says before the Christmas performance if she immediately thinks of it later to use as a weapon.
Karen's character is shortchanged as a sexual being and...that's it. Yeah, Karen's not too bright in the original. We get that. But this performance makes it seem like she has zero value except to be bait. She sings about just being sexy - and she's so vapid, it's hard to care about her. She isn't terribly endearing otherwise. And, sorry, but a girl with a track record of sleeping with eleven people by the beginning of the year ... would be unlikely to not have any new partners between that time and the Christmas performance when Regina uses it as a weapon against her (more on this point later). But Regina's outburst misses the true "mean girl" way of being underhanded in the comment - something said casually to Cady over the phone that 'Karen's so pretty, but people forget about her because she's such a slut" rings more genuine and relatable in mean-girl world. Regina's particular brand of mean isn't consistent with something she would say outright to Karen's face.
Gretchen, Gretchen...what can I say about Gretchen. Gretchen is utterly forgettable in this version because she never gives us the "We should totally just stab Cesar!" moment. She sings a song in Regina's closet with Cady and I honestly cannot tell you what it's about or how it fits, because I've watched this movie at least fifteen times and every time it begins, I have already started to check out. Their discussion of getting Cady a pair of shoes is so dull, I stop listening. You'd think I'd watch it with full attention at least once, but you'd be wrong. She has no fire, no real FETCH. Come on, Gretchen. You can be a little insecure around Regina, but you're part of the clique for a reason, so make us believe it.
All these things already being said - - and we aren't even halfway through - - how Regina is targeted by Janis, Damian and Cady after the Halloween party misses several opportunities. There aren't the same examples of Regina's meanness to that point. Before we get there in the original, we see the secret three-way phone call meant to catch Cady in a lie to make her look bad on purpose ((btw...this was exactly what the mean girl in my life intended to do by breaking into those emails...to find dirt and hold it against her)). We don't see Regina's, "OMG that's so cute, where did you get it?" which turns into a backhanded comment. We don't see Regina's phone call to Planned Parenthood which really shows how determined and downright villainous she is. Since we aren't tied to the story in a first-person POV anymore, I wish we could root for Cady more or, at the very least, really see Regina as a villain instead of just being TOLD that she is.
Sure, Regina kisses her ex-boyfriend. We should be mad about it. But, for real, with the powerhouse song she sings at the Halloween party and the line, "You chose her over me, well...are you kidding?"
Well. Ahem. ::wipes brow:: Dayum, girl, you can have anything you fuckin' want. Whew! The original Regina kisses Aaron and Cady fumes off immediately - then Regina reinforces her "I am going to get him back" position by kissing him again after he pushes her away.
The rest of Regina's dirty deeds of rubbing him in Cady's face is completely lost in the background of "Revenge Party", which is another really fun song, but it glosses over actual plot that's important for how Regina is victimized in return. At the end of this song, I find myself thinking ... who am I supposed to be rooting for, here? Right now, all the things they're doing to Regina feel like overkill. It's missing the fun humor of trying to get Aaron to catch Regina red-handed without Cady looking like a gossip herself to flat-out tell Aaron the truth so quickly.
Cady is jealous over losing the boy. But what else has Regina done - that we have seen? A prime example of show, don't tell - when it comes to differentiating the hero and the villain of a story, you bet your butt I need a real reason to root for a hero and hope for the downfall of a villain.
At the first climax of the OG Mean Girls, when we find out Regina has put herself in the Burn Book and distributes it to frame her former friends, my heart felt tight. I had the same guilty feeling I did looking at the popular girl's email account - we were going to get caught. We were going to get in trouble. In high school, that feels like the end of the world. And while Janis sings in this version, "The world doesn't end, it just feels like it does", we get a lot of good anecdotes about how boys get to fight and girls have to share - but we've been missing the actual examples of underhandedness that made the original movie so palpably real for anyone who's come around a corner and overhead their so-called friends talking shit about them.
By now, you're probably bored with my assessment of this film, just as I've been bored watching it for a sixteenth time as I write this, filling the time with something I consider productive. In all, my conclusions are thus:
There's some great music in here. It's catchy as hell. I have had many of these songs running through my head loudly in the past month at random times.
None of those songs are Cady's. She's supposed to be the lead, right?
It might've been fun to see this story flipped on its head, and maybe I'll write it. Maybe I'll write a story from Regina George's perspective - where she feels she gets her boyfriend back but isn't happy how he spends time 'tutoring' her so-called friend, finds out that person purposely made her gain weight and break out, took her other friends away, and gleefully trashed her reputation. Her "stupid slutty friend" Karen is actually a victim of SA, which is why she is infantile and hypersexual. Gretchen's family life is crumbling, so she depends on Regina's approval for some sense of consistency - because it's easier to follow along than it is to carve the way.
Regina's hot. Her voice is incredible. We're all rooting for her, right?
Jo
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