The 2024 version of Mean Girls was announced as an adaptation of the hit Broadway show (which has the same name) in January 2020, with the original star and writer Tina Fey writing the script and producing it (People). Now, four years after the announcement the movie premiered on January 12th, 2024.
In December of 2022, the cast was announced, including Senior Year actress Angourie Rice taking on Cady Heron, who was originally played by Lindsay Lohan, and Reneé Rapp reprising her role from the Broadway show as Cady’s nemesis Regina George as well as Tina Fey returning, she played Ms. Norbury in the original Mean Girls movie and returned to play the same role, creating a lot of excitement for the film.
While all of this seems exciting, when the movie came out, fans seemed to have a lot of problems with it.
Firstly, there was a lot of criticism regarding how the movie felt like one giant advertisement for the popular makeup brand E.L.F. Many viewers felt that it ruined the movie saying that it felt like they were watching a 2-hour long makeup ad and how it distracted from the movie’s plot.
Secondly, many people believed that the movie was trying too hard to be relatable to younger demographics and included a lot of unnecessary pop culture references. This aspect made the movie a lot less timeless and iconic in comparison to the original which was very disappointing to fans.
Lastly, those who were excited about the movie for its musical element were also seemingly disappointed as the movie had half as many songs as the Broadway version. The film attempts to please fans of the movie and the musical in one go but it is pretty unsuccessful.
Personally, this was not a movie that I was super excited about as I am not a fan of musicals and do not think that anything could outdo the original movie. The casting was also not very interesting to me; I think the use of Chris Briney from the TV series The Summer I Turned Pretty was not for the sake of him embodying the character well but more as a novelty to attract his fans.
I asked a Yorba Linda High School student, Sarah Bennani (12), for her opinion on Mean Girls. She responded, To be brutally honest, the movie flopped hard. It was just not very organized in terms of the theming, and the plot, and was especially disappointing when compared to the OG. — Sarah Bennani(12)
