Mean Girls review: A bizarre experiment gone wonderfully fetch
From blockbuster songs to screwball performances, Tina Fey's musical remake is far from the lazy cash grab it could have been, writes Attitude's Jamie Tabberer
‘Don’t be fooled by the pink. She’s not playing dolls. She is stalking the halls, for the thrill of the kill.’
These are the opening lines of ‘Apex Predator’, a duly fierce, hook-laden song from the soundtrack of the new Mean Girls musical, which rehashes the overfamiliar plot of the 2004 original but uses lyrics to add texture and deepen themes of teen bullying to jaw-dropping effect.
It’s the quality of the music that gets you, distilled after years on Broadway. Take the achingly cool ‘Someone Gets Hurt’, which is the antithesis of a tacky stage number, and sang by actual pop star Reneé Rapp, who plays high school queen bee Regina George.
She serves the song on-screen as if in a music video, wind machine and all, and of a large ensemble cast, is one of about half who are perfectly cast. Her own charisma dominates, but she channels enough of Rachel McAdams’ delicious take on toxicity to keep the character recognisable. (There are visual links, too. Regina’s bare shoulders and bra straps during the Burn Book segment, for example. Why is this look so emblazoned in my mind!?)
As you watch the new version, a rather mean game worthy of the Plastics sets in. Who out-performs, or at least matches, their predecessor, and who pales in comparison? In truth, everyone pulls their weight, but there are stand-outs. Angourie Rice is a reliable centre of gravity as main character Cady, sensibly resisting the urge to camp it up as the OG new girl similarly underplayed, albeit immortalised before by Lindsay Lohan. (Spoiler alert: Lindsay returns for a slightly wooden cameo in 2024.)
“Tina Fey of course edits and accentuates Mean Girls’ dialogue for a 2024 audience”
Elsewhere, Avantika Vandanapu is sensational as Karen, taking the character to a place of joyous, heavily lip-glossed farce. Her take couldn’t be more different than Amanda Seyfried’s featherlight approach to everyone’s favourite lovable idiot two decades ago. She’s also a transfixing dancer. Tony-nominated Jaquel Spivey, meanwhile, employs the dulcet tones and stage presence of Sam Smith to turbocharge Damien, who sort of gets a love interest this time around.
This is one of several nips and tucks carried out by Mean Girls‘ creator Tina Fey, also back and looking exactly the same as Ms. Norbury. She of course edits and accentuates the dialogue for a 2024 audience: social media references are in, naturally, and problematic gags are out. Some may find the new humour too safe, but at least one zinger that made us guffaw (“if you don’t dress like a slut, you’re slut-shaming us!”) is razor sharp.
Evidently, a new trend is upon us: Mean Girls is not the only seemingly unnecessary movie-turned-musical coming up. And while you may expect the worst of The Colour Purple, out this month, you can trust us when we say the LGBTQ-themed masterpiece is overpowering in its urgency and authenticity. It just had to be made, no two ways about it.
Mean Girls 2.0 is not that. But then, it’s not trying to be. And while it may lack the heart and of course the spontaneity of its ancestor, it is absolutely hilarious, and not remotely the lazy cash grab we feared. For that reason, it can sit with us… ‘Us’ being the pantheon of crowd-pleasing teen comedies that are somehow more than the sum of their parts. Grool!