The original Mean Girls is one that took me a while to properly get into. When I first watched it, I was in the annoying period where I was dismissing a lot of films aimed at women, but I have thankfully grown out of it and can recognise how good Mean Girls is. That said, when it was announced there was going to be a new version, I wasn’t really sure about it, I didn’t really think there would be a way to make it more effective for a modern audience. However, when I heard it was going to be based on the Broadway musical, I felt that it may be worth a shot. Granted as the stage version hasn’t been staged in the UK at time of writing I couldn’t judge it based on that, but there have been some brilliant musicals based on films coming out in recent years, such as the musical versions of Heathers and Back to the Future, so I was thinking maybe Mean Girls would follow that trend. However, I did find myself pretty disappointed by this new version, which does feel significantly inferior to the original.
This new version follows pretty much the same beats as the original, focusing on Cady Heron, who grew up being homeschooled in Kenya, moving to America and attending high school. Whilst she initially struggles to fit in, she becomes friends with Janice and Damian, who help guide her through the school clique system. However, Cady soon gets the attention of the most popular clique in school, the Plastics, headed by Regina George. Due to a past event where Regina forcibly outed Janice, Janice decides to use Cady to get revenge on Regina and the Plastics, but soon it leads to Cady becoming the same kind of manipulative presence that she was initially warned about, leading to a wider scale conflict throughout the high school. Now there are some updates to this version of Mean Girls that I like. The increased use of social media makes some of the messaging feel more timely and gives a different edge to some of the bullying and revenge plotting we see throughout the film. I also found that having Janice be a lesbian instead of being falsely labelled as such gives a different dimension to the revenge plot. However, the general pacing and style of the film ends up taking the film down. A lot of the character development that we got in the original film, especially for the other Plastics, is just absent here. It feels like there were more songs for them to sing in the original stage version that were cut out here, and it leaves the film incomplete. I also found the framing device of it being narrated by Janis and Damian haphazardly executed, to the point where, when it’s brought back near the end, I forgot it had started that way. There are also changes made from the original that don’t really work, such as making Cady the child of a single parent, rather than showing both her parents like in the original. I know that there are changes made to combine characters in musical versions of films and sometimes that can be really emotionally effective (such as combining Betty Fine and Martha Dunstock in the Heathers musical), but the film does nothing with this change to Cady’s family. I also found the ending to be pretty abrupt. It doesn’t have the epilogue that we got in the original film so it feels like most of the character arcs are incomplete. The highlighting of key bits of dialogue from the original film I also found to be pretty cringey, feeling like they are playing into the memes for the original and not thinking about why those lines were so effective first time around.
The performances as well are a mixed bag. Angourie Rice does a decent job in the speaking scenes showing the initial awkwardness of Cady and how she is corrupting herself into becoming a copy of Regina, but she doesn’t have the best singing voice and it does sound like she’s struggling in a lot of the solo numbers. She doesn’t have the musical chops to carry this film and it does prevent the film from having the energy it needs to in a lot of scenes. There is also a significant issue where I didn’t buy the change in Cady at the end of the film, as it felt like the scenes we needed for this are cut from the film, we don’t see the main impact of Cady’s actions on her and Rice doesn’t bring across the emotional weight needed to sell the development of Cady at the end. Auli’i Cravahlo is solid as Janice, having a brilliant singing voice that sells her solo numbers and there is a bitterness and anger that she brings that helps you understand why she is so willing to dive into the revenge scheme. Jaquel Spivey meanwhile is a lot of fun as Damian. I knew he had the singing chops listening to the Broadway recording of A Strange Loop and he brings those chops here and a lot of the best comedic bits come from his performance. Renee Rapp as Regina George is clearly having a lot of fun and some of the best musical performances in the film come from her, but it feels like there is something missing at the end to close of her character development. Avantika and Bebe Wood as Karen and Gretchen are solid, getting some good laughs and Wood getting a good emotional beat, but again it feels like their character arcs are incomplete. Tina Fey and Tim Meadows come back from the original, but they aren’t really given anything to do, even making fun of the idea of them doing the musical numbers. They are fun to watch again, but it does feel like a weaker version of the original. Jon Hamm and Ashley Park meanwhile could have been cut out of the film entirely and nothing would have been lost, it feeling like they were cast so they could show up in the trailer, with them being given nothing to do.
The technical aspects of the filmed are pretty solid though. The way the musical numbers are staged is strong, with the changing aspect ratios throughout the film giving each number the scale that they need and giving an insight into each of the characters. The actual writing of the songs is a mixed bag, there are some good comedic bits in them with I’d Rather Be Me and What’s Wrong With Me? being the highlights, but it felt like some of them were missing bits in them. There was also a weird use of diegesis with there being some points where we see musicians play along to the songs and be referenced by the other characters but some points where we don’t. It didn’t feel consistent if they were meant to be seen as a part of the world or just in the minds of the characters, which is something that takes me out of musicals really fast.
Overall, whilst I cannot judge this compared to the stage version, this does have the feeling of a stage musical awkwardly stuffed into the run time of a more conventional film, losing significant elements that give the stage version it’s power and longevity. Even though this is longer than the original, it manages to feel really rushed and doesn’t have the same catharsis at the end that the original had. This is probably an instance, like with Heathers, where the better version would have been a pro-shot of the stage version, rather than trying to make it into a more traditional film.
My Rating: 2/5
Coogs Reviews 