Mean Girls is one of the most iconic films of the early 2000s, with a star-studded comedic cast in the making, and unforgettable one-liners buoyed by Tina Fey’s unique slightly raunchy wit; it was the 2000s comedy with everything. The 2024 musical remake plays like a sloppy, halfhearted copy completely devoid of substance and flair. 

The film isn’t sure whether it is an adaptation of the stage musical (though it incorporates many of the songs and dance sequences, it was not marketed as such) or some sort of recreation as tribute to the original, but either way it performs as a messy blend of references and old lines being repeated, which only serve to remind us of much better performances, and a much more genuine movie. This film maybe only works if you are a devoted fan of both the original and the musical adaptation, because it carries no plot and expects audiences to rely only on nostalgia and surprise cameos to grasp what it’s about, leaving an empty, hollow shell of a film. 

Angourie Rice kind of has the comedic chops, but her Cady pales in comparison to the charmingly awkward and undeniably earnest performance that Lindsay Lohan famously gave. Bebe Woods’ Gretchen Weiners is deeply forgettable, which is such a shame because Lacey Chabert plays an essential character in the original; here, she feels like an afterthought. Jaquel Spivey makes the most with what he is given, and his various one-liners and dramatic French rendition of the iCarly theme song are a light in this murky, Shein-clad mess. Auli’i Cravalho’s Janis Ian is definite mimicry, but, like the film itself, it lacks Lizzy Caplan’s sharpness and sense of self. And Reneé Rapp’s Regina George is more of a figure than a person; she doesn’t get any likability besides hotness or star power until the bathroom scene with Cady at the end of the third act. Rapp’s screen presence is stunning, with an undeniably iconic gaze and galactically beautiful blonde hair, but this role, and all these roles, are imitations, and these actors have no room to be anything but a lackluster copy. Still, I found Avantika’s Karen a delightful and charming character. She never missed a comedic beat and shined in her Halloween music number, “Sexy,” even if it faltered under its production–a poor recreation of TikTok transition videos. 

The musical sequences were lackluster, and likely couldn’t even hold a candle to the stylings of the High School Musical trilogy. While the Megan Thee Stallion cameo garnered gasps and applause, nearly every musical number was met with awkward silence and scattered, mocking laughter, with the exception of “World Burn.” The film flourishes when it engages with the fantastical nightmare of the American High School Experience, and even sequences like “Revenge Party” are fun at times, but some are just plain dull. “Apex Predator” plays like bait for the TikTok fancam crowd, and “Stupid With Love” was notably awful; I could physically feel everyone in the audience cringing, and not due to any sort of awkward comedic effect. 

Recent attempts in film to capture the virality of social media and all the horrors it holds have been cringeworthy, to speak for the demographic. They deplete and cheapen the film like physical music into digital media, and play like some sort of AI software had swallowed a stream of TikToks and text messages and Instagram stories, regurgitating nothing of substance or style. Moreover, it was unnecessary, because the morals inside Mean Girls, of our pointless yet seemingly vital quests for popularity, of how we lose sight of our friendships, on the insecure roots of our pettiness and the cure of honest self-ownership, never ever needed a reboot. No amount of TikTok compilations and reaction emojis can say it better than the original did. 

The original Mean Girls was so striking and fantastic, a generation-defining high school film that inspired people to wear pink on Wednesdays decades after its release. Tina Fey’s screenplay was inspired by Queen Bees and Wannabes by Rosalind Wiseman, a nonfiction account of cliques and bullying in high schools. The essence of the film is of empathy by way of spiteful, disastrous high school mean girl drama, where the worst in all of us emerges. It has real bite, and that 2000s wit and iconography that defined the last twenty years. This adaptation/remake seems to have forgotten all of that, ending with a quippy “be nice” message as a weak attempt to remind us what the plot was supposed to be. 

The best movie musicals are rich and vibrant, blending the incredulous tangibility of the theater with the glamor and glistening life of the silver screen. The original, even without being a Broadway musical, was dramatic and theatrical, brilliant in every sense and iconic in ways I could write books describing. The new Mean Girls is, I’m sorry to report, intangible and lifeless. Nothing but plastic.

Mean Girls
2024
dir. Samantha Jayne & Arturo Perez, Jr.
112 min.

Now playing in theaters everywhere