Mean Girls (2004)

Mean Girls (2004)

6/10

Starring

Lindsay Lohan

Rachel McAdams

Tim Meadows

Ana Gasteyer

Amy Poehler

Tina Fey

Directed by Mark Waters

There are some movies that you saw back when you were young and wonder how it will feel seeing these movies again. Sometimes the nostalgia drives you wild and the movie becomes your very own cult classic. A classic that you share with your friends who still find the movie adorable. Mean Girls is one of those movies that developed such status for many people, but for me seeing it again made me recall why I never fancied it much back then either.

The only part of this movie I so much enjoyed is seeing younger versions of the actors we have come to recognize. The acting and writing to me is just on the level of ok and back then in 2004 this movie was so big it was not just a critical delight, but a huge money maker $130 million from a $17 million budget is no joke.

The movie plot is centered around a young girl named Cady (Linday Lohan). Cady grew up in Africa and seemed to be the only girl in the world who will grow up in another part of the world and still have the accent of her native country. For me that was a huge flaw in the script, but that is not the only thing in this movie that just doesn’t work and there is no point delving into that.

Cady was always home schooled by her mother and this was her first time in a real school with other students. Now high school is a place where mean girls live, and Cady was getting a taste of it. She met two students Lizzy and Daniel who became her somewhat best friend and guide.

While she was being hit on, one of plastics (in Cady’s school those are the three popular girls) came to her rescue and recruited Cady to join her crew. Cady was given the rundown on the rules to be part of the crew and the moment Lizzy and Daniel found out, they told her to use the opportunity to spy on the group and get information they can use against Regina (Rachel McAdams). Regina is the most popular girl in school and the leader of the plastics.

Soon Cady goes deep undercover and things start to get blurred and she is finding it hard to distinguish her real self from the person she is pretending to be.

The way everything blew up and how revenge and counter-revenge led to a whole school blow out is what this movie is about.

Back in 2004 this was Tina Fey first writing credit for a feature film, she wrote the screenplay, which was based on her experience in High School and some adaptation from the 2002 book Queen Bees and Wannabes by Rosalind Wiseman.

Mean Girls is a fun movie to watch, but noting much other than that.