Mean Girls: Surprise! Musical Remake of Classic Teen Comedy Fails to Best the Original

By Kim Hughes

Rating: C+

If it were graphically possible, it would be fun to review the new 2024 musical version of Mean Girls in the form of two columns: one listing the pros of the movie, and the other listing the cons. While that may be said of most movies, with Mean Girls, while the list is tight, a clear “winner” emerges, and it’s not the pros.

For example, on the plus side, the new cast can sing, which rather helps in a musical. But they acutely lack the wattage of the original film’s stars, and they’re further hobbled by what might be termed “Grease-ification,” casting obviously adult actors to play teens.

Very unlike Grease, however, the songs here are not instant classics, maybe except for Regina’s theme, “Apex Predator” with its appropriately catty, jungle-inspired dance moves.

Encouragingly, the feature directorial debut of husband-and-wife team Samantha Jayne and Arturo Perez Jr. is presented in concert with Tina Fey who returns as co-star and screenwriter though this time, she has based her reliably snappy script on the Broadway musical adaptation of Mark Waters’s 2004 film, itself based on the 2002 YA book, Queen Bees and Wannabes.

Fey and also-returning sidekick, perennially simmering Tim Meadows, underscore the comparative flatness of newbies Angourie Rice as Cady Heron opposite so-called Plastics Regina (Reneé Rapp, reprising her Broadway role), Gretchen (Bebe Wood), and Karen (Avantika) compared to Lindsay Lohan, Rachel McAdams, Lacey Chabert and Amanda Seyfried in those same roles in 2004.

Sure, comparisons are inevitable and largely unhelpful, and the latter four have had two decades to burnish their reputations, for better or worse. But the chemistry just isn’t there. Also missing — though very much on the plus side — the not-so-subtle racist digs that spiked the original, notably in the first cafeteria scene where Cady is getting the low-down from fellow square pegs Janis and Damian (Auliʻi Cravalho and Jaquel Spivey) on their school’s various cliques.

Perhaps surprisingly for 2024, the film has been toned down in other, less-likely-to-be-controversial ways. For example, Regina’s peek-a-boo boob scene in the original — where a bold T-shirt choice inspires widespread copycatting — is swapped here for running mascara. The infamous Halloween scene, by contrast, remains almost identical to the original save for the addition of a song.

It seems counterintuitive, but in Mean Girls 2024, those brisk pop songs the various cast members spontaneously launch into — most abetted by elaborate, full-cast dance sequences — seem to slow down rather than accelerate the narrative. That’s a complaint with most musicals grafted onto film, since the plot usually doesn’t require the clarification that songs can add in a theatrical context.

But here the result is especially irksome, perhaps because the plot so closely mimics the well-known original, with fish-out-of-water, home-schooled Cady arriving in America from Africa and dropping headfirst into the fraught wilderness of high school.

There, she is simultaneously taken in by the girly girl gang the Plastics and a pair of gay outcasts, the latter scheming with Cady to seek revenge on the former by inserting herself into their orbit and leveraging intel to be used against them to sabotage their daunting schoolwide dominance.

During her double-agent charade, Cady becomes what the outcasts loathe, falling head over heels for Regina’s ex, Aaron, thus adding fuel to her nefarious mission while letting her grades slip to better attract the man she desires.

Deceptions occur, misunderstandings abound but, in the end, we get the good feelings and female camaraderie we crave set to a soundtrack heavy on group singalongs and eye-popping bursts of colour and movement. And yes, there are clever cameos and a disarmingly stocky Jon Hamm, briefly, as a witless phys-ed teacher.

So, there it is: Mean Girls redux for 2024. If I was a teenage girl, I might love it. But as an adult reviewer, I can’t help but feel weary about this earnest but mostly needless retread of a smart and engaging teen comedy, a genuine stand-alone classic. If the Plastics don’t bring you down, then I guess aging will.

Mean Girls. Directed by Samantha Jayne and Arturo Perez Jr. Written by Tina Fey. Starring Tina Fey, Tim Meadows, Jon Hamm, Angourie Rice, Reneé Rapp, Bebe Wood, Avantika, Auliʻi Cravalho and Jaquel Spivey. In theatres January 12.