The new Mean Girls movie musical had its ups and downs. It sometimes strays from the original 2004 movie, sometimes stays closely in line. The movie was enjoyable, but ultimately unmemorable and disappointing.
Mean Girls is about a teenage girl named Cady Heron who moves from Africa to America and goes to North Shore High School after years of being homeschooled. The school contains a clique known as the Plastics, with the infamous character Regina George as its leader. The original movie was released in 2004, and a Broadway musical was based off the movie, debuting in 2018.
“It was definitely an interesting perspective coming off of the original Mean Girls because that’s a classic for a lot of us,” said senior Hayden Wilkerson.
The movie started off strong, with a nice musical piece and some jokes. Cady’s (Angourie Rice) witty personality made her extremely easy to connect with. Rice was the best actor in the film, lending her own flair to the iconic character. Her performance never wavered throughout the almost two hour movie, and she carried the whole movie with poise and grace, as Cady learned how to settle into the crazy world of high school.
The movie began to feel incoherent when they forced Regina George (Renee Rapp) and her superiority complex on the audience. The original movie showed Regina’s power in multiple ways, allowing the audience to draw their own conclusions about the infamous character without being told what to think. However, the musical never stops trying to convince the audience of her power and control through many of the songs (such as “Meet the Plastics” and “Apex Predator”), singing dramatically about how she runs the school, and how no one has a say otherwise.
The songs were fun and entertaining. While the music itself was forgettable, the choreography made what might have been forgettable numbers stand out. The famous Halloween party scene had perhaps the most fascinating choreography to watch, utilizing the idea of people recording themselves on social media and using that within the song, titled “Sexy.”
“I definitely think the song ‘Sexy’, which is sung by Karen, was one of the ones that stood out, even though they changed the music, the dance, and everything. The actor portrayed it so well that it’s [almost] just as good as the original on Broadway,” said sophomore Olive Han.
While Rice was delightful as Cady, Karen Shetty (Avantika Vandanapu), the character famously known as “the dumbest person you’ll ever meet” fell flat. The acting from Vandanapu felt forced, and her jokes rarely landed. With the right delivery, the jokes had the potential to be flawless and fluid within the conversations happening, but each joke came off as awkward and corny.
“Karen was casted pretty accurately, but her acting probably could have been better,” said Wilkerson.
However, Bebe Wood, who played Gretchen Wieners, played her character perfectly. She walked the fine line between cool and popular, while simultaneously being unsure of herself and what Regina thought of her, allowing the audience to feel pity for the character. Her jokes consistently landed throughout the movie.
Rapp was as best as she could be as Regina George. Rachel McAdams (who played Regina in the original) and Taylor Louderman (who played the character on Broadway in 2018) left legacies behind when both played the character and left big shoes to fill for whoever decided to step into those pink high heels next, which Rapp first did in the Broadway musical in 2019. There were moments when Rapp’s performance slipped, and it became harder to believe she was the queen bee of the school, but overall, her performance remained steady throughout, and while it wasn’t standout, it wasn’t horrible.
“It was definitely weird,” Wilkerson said. “It was a culture shock. I think that they casted interestingly, but she did her best to play that character.”
The movie musical kept elements of the original movie that are beloved by many, but one of the best running gags they kept was the jokes from the teachers. The original movie had many of the teachers making questionable comments or doing questionable things to provide a more adult humor to the movie, and the musical did not disappoint on that front. They would drop in every now and again with well-delivered, funny comments, and each joke packed the laughter it was meant to. The teachers were one of the more enjoyable aspects of the movie. It was disappointing they weren’t in the movie more, as they propped the movie up when it started to slip.
Overall, the movie wasn’t worth the money spent at the theater and didn’t live up to the potential it had. It was mostly forgettable and not a stand-out film, but it was semi-enjoyable to revisit the world of North Shore High School for a few hours. However, the movie never felt fully complete without a single utterance of the line: “Get in, loser, we’re going shopping.” The loss of that iconic quote was the capper to an ultimately disappointing film.
