MEAN GIRLS (2004)

MEAN GIRLS (2004)

Tagline: Welcome to Girl World.

(Comedy, Teen Drama, Don’t Have Sex, Because You Will Get Pregnant And Die) [PG-13]

It's like I have ESPN or something.

In this one, a new girl named Cady Heron moves from her home school in Africa to America to go to North Shore High School. Once there she gets introduced to the world of teenage girls including Freshmen, ROTC Guys, Preps, J.V. Jocks, Asian Nerds, Cool Asians, Varsity Jocks, Unfriendly Black Hotties, girls who eat their feelings, girls who don’t eat anything, desperate wannabees, burnouts, sexually active band geeks, the greatest people you will ever meet and the “Plastics” who are basically teenage royalty. Will Cady go too far to fit in? 

One of the things I liked about this movie is when a character says something and then they show a bunch of students explaining their reaction to it or their experience with the subject. This comedic method was also used to perfection in SCOTT PILGRIM VS THE WORLD. Tiny Fey’s writing was a bit of a stretch for me in some areas, but it did cross over a bit into my high school days and things I was at least familiar with in high school were 13 years before this movie came out. Things like nicknames and trying to be cool, relationship drama, and all of that stuff. There was one cool Asian kid that hung out with us named “Dom” and we called him “Dominator”. He loved it because back then not every little thing meant you were a racist. It was literally a term of endearment.  He was a really cool kid to me, but my whole circle of friends at the time would have definitely been considered artsy dorks like Janis and Damian. A lot of the humor does land though. We also get a bit of a glimpse into how Regina’s mom is basically letting music videos raise her youngest daughter. I think when I was really young I had no idea how sexual everything was, which is why I find it even more sadistic and sick that they are trying to shove sexual depravity on young and young children. One of the reasons for that is because some claim that kids know about sexuality at a very young age. Of course, that is TOTAL BS. I didn’t get the sexual innuendos in just about everything till I was older and it always felt pervy as hell. Anyway, back to the movie. Another great thing about it is that rather than breaking the fourth wall, we get Cady’s internal monologue which adds a lot of depth to her character. 

As far as the acting, this thing is pretty top-notch. This was made back when Lindsay Lohan was basically at the peak of her career acting wise and she is fantastic as Cady. This was also probably the height of Lacey Chabert’s peak as well as Gretchen and she does a great job in this. She has been very successful doing voice work and small films since this movie came out though. Lizzy Caplan is very good in this as Janis Ian, but this isn’t the best I have seen her. She was even better in EXTINCTION. She also has a TV series coming out based on the movie FATAL ATTRACTION where she is playing Alex. So – yeah – that should be nuts. This one was Amanda Seyfried’s first role ever and she is good, but was asked to play a dumb girl, so it wasn’t probably all that challenging acting-wise. I think most people can play dumb characters. Seyfried is still very active in Hollywood though which is awesome. Having said all that the most successful of all of the main actresses is Rachel McAdams who played Regina. She is now a part of the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe), but she had also done several big movies outside of that including both SHERLOCK HOLMES films (2009, 2011). The rest of the cast is pretty good as well. 

Apparently, this movie had to tone down several scenes to ensure a PG-13 rating, but the stuff I have heard they had to tone down doesn’t seem like it would have warranted an R rating anyway. The film includes sexually suggestive stuff, but different words are used for various acts and one “implication” scene was removed, but it didn’t include nudity or anything. 

In spite of a few issues, this thing has a lot of positives and it still holds up very well to this day. The core message is redeeming, unlike more terrible humorless efforts like 2022’s HONOR SOCIETY. There is a decent batch of teen comedies that have stood up well over time and this is one of the more quotable iconic ones that I am pretty sure will get eaten alive by the woke mob at some point. 

MEANS GIRLS lands a solid 5 out of 7. I liked Tina Fey in this but could have done without Amy Poehler’s character altogether. 

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