Mean Girls

Overview

On years ending in four in even-numbered decades, we watch new Mean Girls films. So goes the 21st century so far, as the hit 2004 teen comedy about high-school hierarchies returns to the big screen in 2024 as a musical, after breaking out the singing and dancing onstage first. Just like donning pink every Wednesday because Regina George (Reneé Rapp, The Sex Lives of College Girls) demands it, there's a dutifulness about the repeat Mean Girls. Tina Fey, writing the script for the third time — basing her first on Rosalind Wiseman's 2002 non-fiction book Queen Bees and Wannabes — seems to fear the consequences for breaking the rules, too. Cue a Mean Girls movie musical that truly plays out as those four words lead viewers to expect: largely the same down to most lines and jokes, just with songs. Anyone looking at the longer running time in advance and chalking up the jump from 97 to 112 minutes to the tunes is 100-percent spot on.

The latest Mean Girls also resembles protagonist Cady Heron (Angourie Rice, The Last Thing He Told Me): eager to fit into its new surroundings after being perfectly happy and comfortable elsewhere. That causes some awkwardness, sometimes trying to break the mould, but largely assimilating. Penning her first film script since the OG Mean Girls was her very first, 30 Rock, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt and Mr Mayor creator Fey revises details and gags that were always going to need revising. Social media, the internet and mobile phones are all worked in, necessarily so, as is sex positivity. Mean Girls 2024 is primarily dedicated to making Mean Girls 2024 happen, though; here as well, it's exactly as those three words have audiences anticipating. Scrap the songs and choreography (other than the Winter Talent Show performances, of course), and directors Samantha Jayne and Arturo Perez (Quarter Life Poetry: Poems for the Young, Broke & Hangry) would've just remade the first film two decades later.

There's a message in the Means Girls cycle, as the initial movie closed with. No matter how many obnoxious and angsty young women learn to cope with their ire and embrace kindness, more will follow the same journey, then more again. Accordingly, Mean Girls could easily be restaged every generation with nothing but era-appropriate changes and the tale would still ring true, as proves the case with its second cinema telling — plus the musical angle. That's a testament to the strength of and insights in Fey's foundational screenplay. It's also a sad truth about human nature. But like Gretchen Wieners (Bebe Wood, Love, Victor) yearning for a life and acceptance that doesn't involve everything that Regina decrees, viewers can be forgiven for wanting more from each Mean Girls iteration. While this is a winking, nudging, self-referential take that's forcefully trying to get playful with its devotion to its source material, Regina herself might call it an obsession.

Once more, Cady swaps the savannahs of Africa for Evanston, Illinois, then homeschooling for North Shore High School, entering a savage teenage jungle in the process. With talented artist Janis (Auli'i Cravalho, the voice of Moana) and the "almost too gay to function" Damian (Jaquel Spivey, a 2022 Tony-nominee for A Strange Loop) to steer her, she joins the world of cliquery, where the Plastics — Regina, plus Gretchen and fellow entourage member Karen Shetty (Avantika, also The Sex Lives of College Girls) — rule the school. Befriending the in-crowd is meant to be a social experiment. Cady's mum (Jenna Fischer, Splitting Up Together) is a zoologist, after all. But after Cady gets a maths class-sparked crush on Regina's ex Aaron Samuels (Christopher Briney, The Summer I Turned Pretty), the newcomer's stint at the popular lunch table morphs into a vengeance mission.

Opening with the Cravalho- and Spivey-sung 'A Cautionary Tale' — Janis and Damien are viewers' guides, too — the Mean Girls movie musical uses songs in place of the original's voiceover, and to plumb the characters' emotional and psychological depths. Composer Jeff Richmond (Girls5eva) and lyricist Nell Benjamin (The Sea Beast, and another Tony-nominee) rework their tunes from the stage production that debuted in 2018, then was locked in for a film adaptation in 2020, with additions and exclusions; rarely are they the most memorable parts of the movie. Collaborating with YouTube-famous choreographer Kyle Hanagami (Red, White & Royal Blue), Jayne and Perez opt for a more-is-more vibe; however, the musical numbers ape the overall feature in miniature. Some aspects shine, such as the pure energy of the plan-setting 'Revenge Party' and the sincerity in Gretchen's 'What's Wrong with Me?'. Others are catchy but perfunctory, like the Rice-crooned 'Stupid with Love', plus Cravalho and Spivey again with 'Apex Predator'. Karen's ditty 'Sexy' is an entertaining social-media riff. And whenever Rapp sings, she's electric, but better than the material.

Rapp was always destined to be one of the new Mean Girls' highlights. She's been here before, stepping into Regina's shoes again after wearing them on Broadway (Only Murders in the Building's Ashley Park also returns from the theatre after originating the role of Gretchen, but as a teacher). In a film so infrequently willing to switch up anything substantial, Rapp's interpretation of Regina is one of its biggest alterations: where Rachel McAdams (Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret) was icily piercing, the IRL pop singer is fiendishly ferocious. That fits today's times where the entire online realm is a burn book, making nastiness virtually the status quo, and it's never one-note. Among her co-stars, Rice, Cravalho, Spivey, Wood and Avantika all ensure that no one is desperately pining for Lindsay Lohan (Falling for Christmas), Lizzy Caplan (Fatal Attraction), Daniel Franzese (Not So Straight in Silver Lake), Lacey Chabert (A Merry Scottish Christmas) and Amanda Seyfried (The Crowded Room) as their characters instead — with Cravalho making the second-biggest impression, and screaming for more non-voicework parts.

Fey returning as Ms Norbury, Tim Meadows (I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson) similarly back as Principal Duvall, Busy Phillips (also Girls5eva) taking over from Amy Poehler (Moxie) as Regina's mother: they're all grool touches. It almost wouldn't be a Fey comedy without Jon Hamm (Fargo) popping up, although he's given little to do —  but scrapping Coach Carr's sex scandals was among the essential updatings. Mean Girls has always known that striving to conform is a clunky task, though it didn't need to live it. While this isn't the first movie to become a stage musical and then return to film also as a musical (see: Little Shop of Horrors, The Producers, Hairspray and Everybody's Talking About Jamie) and won't be the last (the new The Color Purple will follow it into cinemas Down Under, for example), it's firmly an example of being too committed to doing what's expected to have enough of its own fun.