Mean Girls
Release Date: January 12, 2024
Directed By: Samantha Jayne and Arturo Perez Jr.
Written By: Tina Fey
Starring: Renee Rapp, Angourie Rice, Auliʻi Cravalho, Tina Fey, Tim Meadows, and Christopher Briney
Rating: PG-13 for sexual material, strong language, and teen drinking
Runtime: 112 minutes
Just like the OG feature, Mean Girls follows Cady Heron (Angourie Rice), who goes from being homeschooled in Africa to being thrown into the drama of high school in America. She’s quickly befriended by a group of popular girls called The Plastics, and begins to go down a path of sabotage, crap talking, and partying. This time, however, the stakes are changed, and the cast occasionally breaks out into song throughout the movie’s 112-minute runtime. Writer Tina Fey crushed it again with the new take on the modern classic and has adapted this beloved story for a new generation of moviegoers (plus all of us original fans).
Tina Fey is everywhere in this production, writing the script for this new Mean Girls while also reprising her role as Ms. Norbury. She also wrote the book and lyrics for the stage musical, and the songs are written by her husband, Jeff Richmond, who earned a Tony nomination. This new Mean Girls feels super fresh while also delivering what the fandom wants.
The cast of Mean Girls kills, especially Renee Rapp
Another reason why the 2004 Mean Girls movie was such a success because was the performances were truly outstanding. I’m of the opinion that Rachel McAdam’s take on Regina George was worthy of an Oscar nomination. Luckily, an outstanding ensemble was assembled for the new Mean Girls, with the actors artfully delivering Fey’s lines and belting their hearts out during the musical numbers.
While Renee Rapp has the biggest shoes to fill as Regina, she luckily had a leg up on the rest of the ensemble, having previously played the role on Broadway. The recording artist/actress knows this character inside and out and finds a way to put her own sinister spin on the queen bee.
More outstanding performances come from Moana herself Auliʻi Cravalho as Janice, who sounds truly heavenly throughout her songs. Broadway star Jaquel Spivey matches Cravalho’s energy perfectly as bestie Damian, and their scenes together consistently deliver. Tina Fey, Tim Meadows, and Jon Hamm also really bring it in their small but memorable roles.
Mean Girls offers the perfect amount of musical numbers.
Adapting stage musicals for film is usually quite tricky, mostly because there’s a discrepancy in length. In order to fit into the length of a movie, at least a few songs are usually cut (typically to the dismay of the hardcore fandom). While this has set back some projects like Dear Evan Hansen and In The Heights, the new Mean Girls movie features the perfect amount of musical numbers for the the story.
Since the new Mean Girls‘ runtime is just 112-minutes long (as opposed to the Broadway show, which lasted 2 hours and 30 minutes and featured an intermission), Tina Fey and company cut around nine songs for the new movie, keeping nothing but the hits for the film adaptation. Even as a fan of the stage musical, I barely noticed the missing tracks.
Mean Girls is a musical triumph. It’s the perfect blend of old and new, full of outrageous performances, and a killer script by Tina Fey. In short: it’s all very, very grool.
