Mean Girls (2024)
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Mean Girls Movie Review
Mean Girls is a 2024 musical teen comedy film directed by Samantha Jayne and Arturo Perez Jr. It was written by Tina Fey and it stars Angourie Rice and Renee Rapp. It’s a strong remake.
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“Get in, loser“
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Cady Heron is a hit with the Plastics, an A-list girl clique at her new school. But everything changes when she makes the mistake of falling for Aaron Samuels, the ex-boyfriend of alpha Plastic Regina George. This is a remake of the original 2004 cult classic and I would actually say that it’s pretty much on par with its predecessor. It’s a fresh take on a familiar story, one that was enlivened by a strong cast and solid humor.
The main difference here is that this time we have a musical. And this is a real musical with numerous numbers interspersed well throughout the film’s prolonged runtime. These songs led to a longer film than it should have been, but they still functioned as solid character arc builders and fine plot transitions. I do realize that some people may hate them as the songs are far from memorable and they are quite aggressive and loud, but I personally at least liked the majority of them. Most are catchy, very well choreographed and quite amusing in their light and humorous approach.
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But the cast is the highlight here. These are all actresses in their early to mid twenties, so they actually for the most part looked and sounded the part, which made the characters very believable. Angourie Rice is solid as the protagonist Cady. She got the best arc of the bunch. Renee Rapp is almost as good as Rachel McAdams. She wasn’t as hot as the role demanded clearly, but she stole the movie in coolness factor with so much evident charisma.
But the friends characters were the standouts for me. Bebe Wood of ‘Love, Victor’ fame was very endearing as Gretchen, Jaquel Spivey was by far the funniest actor of the bunch and some of his scenes were absolutely hilarious, and Avantika was one of the standouts as she was so well cast and quite believable in the role. Christopher Briney’s character was underutilized, but it was nice seeing Auli’i Cravalho, the voice of ‘Moana’. Her Janis is now lesbian, which was a fresh change, and I just loved how charming and cool she was.
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This Mean Girls remake has a solid focus on social media, but clearly they could have gone even more in that direction as this is after all 2024 and teenagers are spending so much time online, but those scenes that we got were realistic and well written. The humor overall is pretty good and so is the dialogue, though the directing and pacing should have been stronger. It’s a highly entertaining flick, one that is difficult not to at least like if not love. Some of the nastiness is blunted here as the movies of this current period unfortunately have to be politically correct, but we still got our fair share of teenage competitiveness and toxicity.
The remake of Mean Girls is pretty much on par with the original when all is said and done. Yes, some of the nastiness of the original is absent as the movies today are too politically correct and the movie would have benefitted from an even bigger emphasis on social media. But the dialogue and humor are mostly quite good, the musical numbers are solid albeit a bit aggressive, and the highlight is its cast of competent young actors, everyone delivering splendid work. The standouts are very funny Jaquel Spivey, quite memorable Avantika, surprisingly strong Auli’i Cravalho and Renee Rapp, who is a pretty good and confident new Regina George.
My Rating – 4
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