Today it seems like Hollywood can only do remakes, prequels, and spinoffs. Iterations on already fleshed-out ideas and series are becoming the most prevalent form of entertainment. That being said, Tina Fey couldn’t resist the potential money from a remake of her hit movie “Mean Girls.” “Mean Girls” (2004) was a fantastic critique of “girl world,” the social circle of teenage girls in the early 2000s. The original movie grossed 130 million dollars worldwide and has become a part of the pop culture canon. The simple, sometimes absurd humor of “Mean Girls” created some of the most iconic lines in TV history.
To take on such an ambitious remake, two things had to happen: the original writer, Tina Fey, had to have an active role in the production and there had to be a twist to make a remake worthwhile. Luckily, both happened.
There was already an adaptation of Mean Girls to work with—the Broadway musical. In 2017, Tina Fey and lyricist Nell Benjamin came together to create “Mean Girls” on Broadway, a musical adaptation of the 2004 movie. Fans, for the most part, loved the musical version. This created a great foundation for a movie-musical based on the musical which was based on the original movie. If that sounds confusing, that’s because it is. Still, there was ample opportunity to make this movie work, so does it?
Aside from the musical aspect, the most notable change in the 2024 version is the modernization and diversification of the plot and characters. A small plot point in the original version was the existence of race-based cliques. For example, “Mean Girls” (2004) pushed the idea that Asian students stick together and tend not to mingle with non-Asians. This plot point, thankfully, is removed from the new movie. The Plastics, the “mean girl” clique in the story, is no longer all-white. The Indian-American actress Avantika does a phenomenal job playing Karen Shetty, hilariously channeling the “dumb blonde” trope perfectly despite not looking the part. The so-called enemies of the mean girls, Janis and Damien, are also cast as non-white. Hawaiian actress Auli’i Cravalho plays Janis ‘Imi’ike (formerly Janis Ian), and black actor Jaquel Spivey plays Damien Leigh. These updates reflect the diverse reality of American high schools and feel unobtrusive, so it’s an overall positive change.
A much more intense change is Fey’s attempt to fill the plot of the film with references to Gen Z culture. For example, Regina George’s song introducing her character now includes the line “that filter you use looks just like me.” There are many unnecessary shots in the movie that attempt to replicate the look of an iPhone recording video, either on TikTok or on the camera app; virtually every scene includes phones. Every “scandal” in the movie is followed by a montage of social media reactions and texts from fellow students. While some regard these changes as “camp,” others regard them as unnecessary and distracting. Either way, there’s no doubt they’ll quickly become outdated, something that the original doesn’t struggle with as much.
The casting in “Mean Girls” (2024) is incredible. Renée Rapp’s performance as Regina George is unsurprisingly exceptional. Rapp previously performed as Regina on Broadway, but her time was cut short due to the Covid-19 shutdowns. Rapp’s singing is powerful and she delivers classic Mean Girls lines almost exactly like the former actress for Regina, Rachel McAdams. The previously mentioned Avantika, Auli’i Cravalho, and Jaquel Spivey all have equally amazing vocal and stage performances. Cravalho notably voiced Moana in Disney’s 2016 animated movie, and her voice remains as strong as it was then.
The only arguably lackluster performance was Aun-gorie Rice, who plays the protagonist Cady Haron. While her acting is great, Rice’s voice is much softer and at some points underwhelming than her co-actors who are trained in Broadway-style singing. Rice is also Australian, so there are times when her artificial American accent feels a bit awkward when she sings. Still, her performance was not egregious, and her mellow demeanor is more accurate to Cady than the often exaggerated performance of Cady on Broadway.
In my opinion, the worst part of the movie is the cuts made from the Broadway songs. The soundtrack of the movie has roughly half the songs that the musical has. The worst of the cuts has to be within “Meet the Plastics,” a song used to introduce the audience to each of the 3 Plastics: Regina George, Gretchen Weiners, and Karen Shetty. Gretchen and Karen’s parts were both removed, making “Meet the Plastics” just “meet one Plastic in about a minute and find out about the rest later.” It was an awful way to lower the movie’s run time. Despite the cuts to many of the best songs in the musical, they did at the very least keep all of the most notable songs on the soundtrack.
The Mean Girls remake is, as controversial as it is to say this, a well-done update to a beloved series. It will undoubtedly bring the joy of Mean Girls to a new generation. If you expect it to live up to the original, you’ll be very disappointed. If you look at it, however, like a whimsically modernized musical remake, it serves that purpose well. It’s fun, light, melodramatic, and features Tina Fey; at the end of the day, that’s all anyone can ask for in a movie.
