“Mean Girls” was released in theaters on January 12, 2024, portraying the iconic characters from the original “Mean Girls” movie from 2004, with the spotlight on Regina George: the Queen Bee of North Shore High. So far, the movie is rated 70% by Rotten Tomatoes and has already grossed $68 million worldwide.
The film opens up with a burst of song, “A Cautionary Tale” sung by Janis (Auli’i Cravalho) and Damian (Jaquel Spivey). The film consists of 34 minutes of songs compared to over an hour of musical numbers in the Broadway show.
For the sake of time, Warner Bros took out popular songs such as “Fearless” and “More Is Better” that were included in the Broadway version. This upset many theater enthusiasts. The movie moves slowly with no noticeable twists from the other adaptations of “Mean Girls,” since at points during the movie, it seems that producers just wanted to elongate the screen time instead of adding in anticipated scenes or songs.
The movie showcases Reneé Rapp, who plays the original Regina George on Broadway back in 2019. With a total of three solo songs in the film, Rapp is the centerpiece with an overall dark, deep tone, the use of slow beats and instrumentation leaning towards the rock/pop genre.
The group of popular girls at North Shore High including Regina George are referred to as the “plastics,” keeping with the stereotypes of the group. Each of the three plastics has at least one solo throughout the film.
With “Meet the Plastics” in the Broadway musical, each member is presented separately, taking time to fully introduce the characters. However, in the movie, the only one singing and being introduced is Regina George, which was a disappointment to many due to the relevance of the other plastics in the other adaptations.
Karen, a member of the plastics, played by Avantika Vandanapu, adds comedic relief to the movie. However, at times her character is overly portrayed as being an airhead. Her stupidity is almost too cringy to watch throughout the movie.
The movie also only briefly touched on Bebe Wood’s character, Gretchen Wieners. Even though she was a supporting character in the film, more about her could have been included rather than just having her tag along with the group.
Tina Fey and Tim Meadows return as their original roles from the iconic 2004 movie with a slight change, as they are now a married couple in the 2024 version. The original Cady (Lindsay Lohan) appears during the mathletes competition at the wrap up of the movie.
Angourie Rice, who played Cady Heron, was bashed online for her emotionless vocals in the film. Along with being mocked for sloppy camera motion in the song “Revenge Party” that looked like it was poorly filmed using a GoPro.
Many moviegoers looked forward to seeing Aaron Samuels, played by Christopher Briney, singing in the new movie. Nevertheless, it was disappointing when the movie concluded without Briney singing Aaron Samuels’ song “More is Always Better” from the Broadway production.
Throughout the movie, the main characters’ outfits change and audiences can tell that not much thought went into the plastics outfits other than going for a “modern teen look.” The outfits looked more like they were cheaply made and could be found on fast fashion websites like Shein.
Many would assume that with the extra money put into the 2024 movie, that they would have decent costumes. However, the original 2004 movie had characters shown in iconic costumes that people to this day use as inspiration for their outfits and/or halloween costumes. It was a bit of a let down seeing this as the modernized version of the plastics.
However, they kept the recognizable costumes such as Cady’s Ex-Wife (dead bride) costume and the blue sweatshirt with sunglasses Damian wears towards the end of the film. Overall, the main characters’ costuming barely stood out from the background characters’ and viewers found themselves looking elsewhere, other than the characters in the spotlight.
The plastics’ outfit choices switched after the fall of Regina George getting booted from the plastics, with a switch from the staple pink to a range of blues leading viewers to see a change in power within the plastics.
Additionally, the whole movie felt like a high budget E.L.F. commercial with blatant promotions of products.
The high schoolers also used various social media platforms such as TikTok, along with appearances from known influencers such as Chris Olsen, among others.
The adaptation has obvious similarities with the original movie and the Broadway version, but the film has a more modern look. They changed several lyrics and dialogue throughout, keeping it body positive and more appropriate for today’s standards.
Overall, the film added modern twists to the “Mean Girls” franchise while including some of the iconic aspects of the original movie. However, sometimes producers need to step back before adding yet another adaptation to a franchise.
