Musical 'Mean Girls' more than justifies its existence
Another movie musical in which its marketing campaign hides that it's a musical
Less than a month after the release of The Color Purple, we have yet another movie in the original movie-to-Broadway musical-to-musical movie pipeline. And like The Color Purple and also Wonka, the new Mean Girls is being sold as a “reimagining,” and “a bold new take” —— “a new twist from Tina Fey’ — anything, really, but a musical. And also like The Color Purple, the new Mean Girls brings enough to the table to more than justify its existence
The new edition of Mean Girls arrives nearly 20 years after the 2004 original, which was written by Tina Fey in her first big foray into movies. The 2004 film was based on an anthropological nonfiction book called “Queen Bees and Wannabes” by Rosalind Wiseman, who, I assume, has gotten paid repeatedly for all those adaptations, much the way John Waters finally became wealthy in his 60s thanks to all those different versions of Hairspray.
The original film starred Lindsay Lohan, then at the absolute height of her brief movie star run, as Cady, who moves from Africa with her parents straight into the deep end of suburban high school drama. The plot had Cady befriended by a pair of outcasts and encouraged to infiltrate the queen bee clique known as The Plastics (led by Rachel McAdams’ villainous Regina George.)
The first Mean Girls was a sleeper hit when it landed in the spring of 2004, leading to lots of iconic catchphrases, while also launching the careers of McAdams, Amanda Seyfried, and Lizzy Caplan. The musical adaptation, with songs by Fey’s husband Jeff Richmond, and lyricist Neil Benjamin, arrived on Broadway in 2018 and while the pandemic shutdown meant the end of its New York run, the stage show has since toured successfully.
So now we have the movie adaptation of that musical. Directed by Samantha Jayne and Arturo Perez Jr., it’s a mostly successful affair, featuring creatively mounted musical numbers and a well-chosen cast. The songs, most of which are rock/pop oriented, aren’t exactly Sondheim-caliber, but they get the job done.
Cady is now played by Angourie Rice, the Australian actress who you may remember as Ryan Gosling’s daughter in The Nice Guys, and later Kate Winslet’s on Mare of Easttown. Her antagonist Regina is now played by Renee Rapp, who played the part on stage and is also on the watchable streaming show The Sex Lives of College Girls. Bebe Wood and Avantika are the other two Plastics while Auliʻi Cravalho, best known as the voice of Moana, steps into Caplan’s part of Janis.
While Cravalho has an exceptionally strong singing voice, Renee Rapp is the star here, and I expect her to emerge from this film as an A-lister much in the same way McAdams did from the first Mean Girls. Meanwhile, Rice and Rapp’s characters each have mothers, played respectively by Jenna Fischer and Busy Philipps, who resemble their daughters strikingly.
If anything, the film is much more interesting when the Plastics are on screen, as opposed to the outcast trio of Cady, Janis, and Damien.
Beyond the additions of songs, there are various other updates, 20 years on. The cast is a wee bit more racially diverse, and gone are many of the slightly racist touches that have occasioned a long list of “Mean Girls is problematic” pieces over the years.
The film establishes that Cady, rather than “Africa,” actually lived in a specific country (Kenya.) Social media plays a major role in the plot, and a character in the original in which all signs pointed to them being gay gets to be gay this time. And this film understands that, in the end, Janis and Damien were every bit as mean as Regina, if not meaner.
While all the kids are played by new actors, of course, Fey and her fellow SNL veteran Tim Meadows return in their teacher roles, joined by Jon Hamm, in a too-small role that doesn’t allow him any screen time with his old 30 Rock love interest Fey. Ashley Park, from last year’s hilarious Joy Ride, also plays a tiny role as a teacher, likely in a nod to her having appeared in the stage version.
Meanwhile, if you were wondering what it would take for Lindsay Lohan to land a role in a Hollywood studio film in 2024, the answer is “they made a Mean Girls reboot and gave her a brief cameo.” I’m sure a Framing Britney Spears-style Lohan re-appraisal isn’t far away, however…
As for the advertising of this, and other musicals, that leaves out the part about the film being a musical- why do this? Why not market to people who enjoy musicals- including the Mean Girls one, which seems to be pretty popular? Isn’t it a likely generator of bad word of mouth, for moviegoers to show up and be surprised when the characters start singing?