By Annabel Ross
MEAN GIRLS ★★
(PG) 112 minutes
A curious thing about the two-minute trailer for the new Mean Girls movie is that it does not betray once that the movie is in fact, a musical. Quizzed on the red carpet about this, debut feature film directors Samantha Jayne and Arturo Perez Jr admitted “this was not our decision”.
Bebe Wood, Renee Rapp and Avantika in Mean GirlsCredit: Jojo Whilden/Paramount
Perhaps, after seeing the movie, distributor Paramount correctly wondered if this musical reboot should have gone ahead in the first place.
The original 2004 Mean Girls was an instant classic, minting US$130 million at the box office and ushering a litany of still-popular quotes into the adolescent lexicon.
A fable chronicling the fallout from Cady Heron’s transition from fish-out-of-water nice girl to popular school bully, it made stars of its young cast including Lindsay Lohan, Rachel McAdams and Amanda Seyfried and was co-written by Tina Fey – then head writer at Saturday Night Live – who also starred as a teacher in the film.
In 2018, Fey penned a successful Broadway adaptation, and the new movie blends elements of the 2004 film and the stage production in what feels like a failed science experiment.
A recent rewatch of the 2004 film revealed some of the jokes to be tired, racist and plain inappropriate.
The redo features a more diverse cast (the ditzy Karen, played by Seyfried in the original, is replaced by American-Indian actor Avantika; the black and fabulously flamboyant Jaquel Spivey plays the “almost too gay to function” sidekick Damian) and omits some questionable storylines altogether, including the bit where the gym teacher turns out to be a paedophile.
Regrettably, this also reduces the Coach Carr character to a cameo played by a scene-stealing Jon Hamm, while the glut of musical numbers (12 in total, 10 of which are from the stage show) also leaves The Office alumnus Jenna Fischer with a thankless small role as Cady’s mother.
As Cady, who trades home-schooling in Kenya for the wilds of the American classroom, Australian actor Angourie Rice is a lovely singer (song and dance chops were obviously a prerequisite when casting leads), but is too wholesome to pull off her mean girl makeover and isn’t as charismatic as a young Lindsay Lohan (who also makes a surprise, wooden cameo in the new film).
Christopher Briney also lacks the dazzle to play love interest Aaron Samuels, but Renee Rapp fares better as queen bitch Regina George. Rapp, also a singer-songwriter who starred as Regina on Broadway and plays the spiky Leighton on Mindy Kaling’s The Sex Lives of College Girls, brings the required bite to the role and co-pens a couple of agreeable new tracks for the movie.
Jayne and Perez Jr, who have previously directed sleek commercials for the likes of Apple and Starbucks as well as a short form comedy-musical called Quarter Life Poetry that began as an Instagram account, bring a modern sensibility to the film’s direction.
Some scenes in Mean Girls are filmed as if by smartphone, TikTok-style storytelling is cleverly threaded through the songs, and the film is choreographed by YouTube sensation Kyle Hanagami.
It’s made to cater to Gen Z attention spans, but the dizzying direction and relentless dance breaks feel too chaotic for the cinema and better suited to a web series.
Jaquel Spivey, Angourie Rice and Auli’i Cravalho in Mean Girls.Credit: Jojo Whilden/Paramount
Fey, who also wrote the screenplay for the new movie and is taking the Broadway show to London’s West End in June, has made a fortune from the Mean Girls empire.
The original film was iconic, the musical by all reports is great too. This overstuffed mashup, however, feels more like a legacy-tainting cash grab than a “fetch” and vital update.
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