You know when you photocopy something and the copy looks slightly worse? That's how I feel about Mean Girls (2024). It's an impression of the 2004 classic, a sometimes fun one, but ultimately, far worse in every regard.
Let's get this out of the way: this is a musical. I's not bad because it's a musical, it's just a bad one. The songs are pretty terrible; I can't remember a single melody from any of them. They all sound overly flat and processed, and mixed terribly. No duets or ensemble songs either; they all feel designed to be pop songs, which is decidedly a TERRIBLE way to write songs for a musical. Secondly, the songs don't advance the plot at all, often focusing on surface level aspects of a scene. Also, the lyrics are just flat out bad. Why start "Sexy" as an ode to Halloween, but then completely abandon that fun premise and have it sound like a generic EDM pop song? Why sing Apex Predator that grating way?
Not to mention, this film lacks the iconic score and theme music from the original, aside to briefly remind you of the better movie. Most of the scenes at least feel silent and frankly, kind of awkward.
Awkward is probably the best way to describe a lot of the performances. Many of them are impressions of the original, and while some are fun: Bebe Wood gives a decent *impression* of Lacey Chabert's Gretchen Weiners, but without the manic intensity. Avantika is cute and funny at times as Karen, but also acts utterly braindead, unlike Seyfried, who really humanized the role. All the characters' base aspects are dialed up to 11, which makes me suspect the writers didn't understand them in the first place.
Three stick out: Cady (played by Angourie Rice) made me realize how fantastic Lindsay Lohan was as the character 20 years ago. Lacking an internal narration (given to Damien and Janice, which suits a stage play but not a film), she's a boring and lifeless character, played by Rice, who often seems uncomfortable in the role and frankly, can't sing. Not to mention her relationships with the Plastics and even Janice and Damien never really feel "real." The only time she's convincing is when she's pining over Christopher Briney's Aaron Samuels (who is amazingly even less a presence here than in the original).
Janice (Auli Cavalho) is perhaps the most illustrative of how thin and weak the writing and performances are. Not only does Cavalho not hold a candle to the biting, punk rock essence of Lizzie Caplan's Janice, but she's an objectively worse character. OG Janice was charming and smart, but we all understood that she still wanted to be liked and was deeply HURT by Regina. Even whilst hating her, she wanted to at least be THOUGHT OF by Regina. Here, predictably, Janice is effortlessly cool, confident, and has none of the internal darkness the original did. Not to mention that they end up making her a lesbian, which defeats the entire point of the character. Janice looked and acted a certain way not because of her sexuality, but because that's who she was. The reveal that she is, in fact, straight, wasn't an indictment of "lesbianism". It simply reminds us not to make assumptions about people.
And then there's Renee Rap's Regina George. Oh boy. Rachel McAdams wasn't an iconic antaognist because she was "mean," which is what the writers seem to have thought with this new version. She was smart, calculated, extremely aware of her power and privilege, and unafraid to wield it. Renee walks down the halls and sings about how great she is, but never demonstrates the meanness or the power that Regina is SUPPOSED to have. They softened her character to such an extent that it's hard to believe she'd do most of the terrible things people say she did, to be honest. Rap looks like Regina, but she just doesn't hold a candle.
The entire script lacks the meanness and bite of the original, which is core to its identity (it was frequently described as a "dark comedy"). That script was near perfect, so layered with characters, iconic lines, scenes, dynamics...
This script feels toned down, toothless, and lame. When they (frequently) redo scenes in this one, they're always worse. When they rewrite scenes, they're always worse. Even the side characters, such an integral part of making Northshore feel REAL, only show up to say their iconic lines and leave. They also, uniformly, look way better than the original people in their roles.
The entire point of that casting was to make Mean Girls FEEL real. That ugly and beautiful people coexist in these spaces and unfortunately, there is a hierarchy there. When everyone looks nice, when everyone seems equally confident, when the film doesn't explore the dynamics of the Plastics or the social hierarchy of high school, when the off colour moments like the racial cliques and Coach Karr and Ms. Norberry being a sad divorced lady (and not happily married, in what feels like fan service for the sake of it), the movie just feels like what a lot of modern remakes feel like: lacking the soul of the original. To sum up how bad the writing is, they have Damien literally say "only Cady could've wrote that," in the (admittedly funny) recreation of the final Burn Book scene. A moment that was implied through glances between characters needs to be explained to the audience here.
I could go on and on, but this is long enough. Mean Girls 2024 is good for one thing, reminding you of the excellent original and making you want to watch it again.
Let's get this out of the way: this is a musical. I's not bad because it's a musical, it's just a bad one. The songs are pretty terrible; I can't remember a single melody from any of them. They all sound overly flat and processed, and mixed terribly. No duets or ensemble songs either; they all feel designed to be pop songs, which is decidedly a TERRIBLE way to write songs for a musical. Secondly, the songs don't advance the plot at all, often focusing on surface level aspects of a scene. Also, the lyrics are just flat out bad. Why start "Sexy" as an ode to Halloween, but then completely abandon that fun premise and have it sound like a generic EDM pop song? Why sing Apex Predator that grating way?
Not to mention, this film lacks the iconic score and theme music from the original, aside to briefly remind you of the better movie. Most of the scenes at least feel silent and frankly, kind of awkward.
Awkward is probably the best way to describe a lot of the performances. Many of them are impressions of the original, and while some are fun: Bebe Wood gives a decent *impression* of Lacey Chabert's Gretchen Weiners, but without the manic intensity. Avantika is cute and funny at times as Karen, but also acts utterly braindead, unlike Seyfried, who really humanized the role. All the characters' base aspects are dialed up to 11, which makes me suspect the writers didn't understand them in the first place.
Three stick out: Cady (played by Angourie Rice) made me realize how fantastic Lindsay Lohan was as the character 20 years ago. Lacking an internal narration (given to Damien and Janice, which suits a stage play but not a film), she's a boring and lifeless character, played by Rice, who often seems uncomfortable in the role and frankly, can't sing. Not to mention her relationships with the Plastics and even Janice and Damien never really feel "real." The only time she's convincing is when she's pining over Christopher Briney's Aaron Samuels (who is amazingly even less a presence here than in the original).
Janice (Auli Cavalho) is perhaps the most illustrative of how thin and weak the writing and performances are. Not only does Cavalho not hold a candle to the biting, punk rock essence of Lizzie Caplan's Janice, but she's an objectively worse character. OG Janice was charming and smart, but we all understood that she still wanted to be liked and was deeply HURT by Regina. Even whilst hating her, she wanted to at least be THOUGHT OF by Regina. Here, predictably, Janice is effortlessly cool, confident, and has none of the internal darkness the original did. Not to mention that they end up making her a lesbian, which defeats the entire point of the character. Janice looked and acted a certain way not because of her sexuality, but because that's who she was. The reveal that she is, in fact, straight, wasn't an indictment of "lesbianism". It simply reminds us not to make assumptions about people.
And then there's Renee Rap's Regina George. Oh boy. Rachel McAdams wasn't an iconic antaognist because she was "mean," which is what the writers seem to have thought with this new version. She was smart, calculated, extremely aware of her power and privilege, and unafraid to wield it. Renee walks down the halls and sings about how great she is, but never demonstrates the meanness or the power that Regina is SUPPOSED to have. They softened her character to such an extent that it's hard to believe she'd do most of the terrible things people say she did, to be honest. Rap looks like Regina, but she just doesn't hold a candle.
The entire script lacks the meanness and bite of the original, which is core to its identity (it was frequently described as a "dark comedy"). That script was near perfect, so layered with characters, iconic lines, scenes, dynamics...
This script feels toned down, toothless, and lame. When they (frequently) redo scenes in this one, they're always worse. When they rewrite scenes, they're always worse. Even the side characters, such an integral part of making Northshore feel REAL, only show up to say their iconic lines and leave. They also, uniformly, look way better than the original people in their roles.
The entire point of that casting was to make Mean Girls FEEL real. That ugly and beautiful people coexist in these spaces and unfortunately, there is a hierarchy there. When everyone looks nice, when everyone seems equally confident, when the film doesn't explore the dynamics of the Plastics or the social hierarchy of high school, when the off colour moments like the racial cliques and Coach Karr and Ms. Norberry being a sad divorced lady (and not happily married, in what feels like fan service for the sake of it), the movie just feels like what a lot of modern remakes feel like: lacking the soul of the original. To sum up how bad the writing is, they have Damien literally say "only Cady could've wrote that," in the (admittedly funny) recreation of the final Burn Book scene. A moment that was implied through glances between characters needs to be explained to the audience here.
I could go on and on, but this is long enough. Mean Girls 2024 is good for one thing, reminding you of the excellent original and making you want to watch it again.