Mean Girls (2024) – Fetch

Released: 11th January
Seen: 1st April

In 2004, the film Mean Girls was released and changed the cultural landscape as we know it. It’s kind of staggering to think about just how much of current pop culture can be traced back to that one film. The obvious things it did was demonstrate that Lindsay Lohan wasn’t just a child actress and mark the start of Tina Fey’s rise as a comedic force but it also created a ton of jokes that are still referenced today. Fetch, She Doesn’t Even Go Here, Too Gay To Function, the concept of wearing pink on a certain day of the week and the phrase “Cool Mom” all can be linked back to Mean Girls. It defined an entire generation’s sense of humour, it can’t be understated the kind of cultural impact that it had. Hell, it’s 20 years later and we’re still talking about it, and not just because they adapted it into a stage musical which then got adapted into a film musical, the one I’ll be talking about today.

The 2024 musical version of Mean Girls doesn’t change the plot of the original even a little. It starts the way the original movie did with transfer student Cady Heron (Angourie Rice) moving from Africa to America where she starts at a new school and immediately becomes friends with the weird kids, Janis (Auliʻi Cravalho) and Damian (Jaquel Spivey). While Janis and Damian are giving Cady a grand tour she is introduced to the group known as The Plastics, led by the most evil teenage girl you’ve ever met, Regina George (Reneé Rapp). Somehow The Plastics decide to let Cady into their group, which works for Janis and Damian who want to use that to infiltrate the Plastics and bring them down. The first problem is that Cady has developed a crush on Regina’s ex-boyfriend Aaron (Christopher Briney) which makes her vulnerable and the second problem… Cady might not be as nice as she seemed, she might be a little too good at blending in with the plastics.

To be about as blunt as one could be, the 2024 version of Mean Girls is nothing but the original story with some sub-par songs added in every now and then. Almost every memorable joke from the original turns up here and there’s none of the new stuff is anywhere near as memorable as “boo you whore” or “don’t have sex, you will get pregnant and die”, so what we’re kind of left with is a recreation of the 2004 film done by memory with occasional musical numbers. Sure there are some things that you’re going to have to repeat just because of how well-known the source material is, but with no notable additions beyond the songs it feels like there’s no real reason to remake this beyond just having a version of the stage show recorded for posterity.

What prevents most of Mean Girls from being completely pointless is that most of the cast is genuinely well-cast. Janis and Damian basically act as our narrators and both their performers deliver everything they have with gusto, as do the majority of the Plastics who are just ditzy enough to be entertaining. The undeniable standout of the entire film is Renee Rapp as Regina George, a role that has gone down in pop culture as a truly iconic villain and Renee rises to the challenge. When she’s on screen, all eyes are on her and you do not look away because either she’s going to just be gloriously bitchy or deliver a jaw-dropping musical number and make it look effortless. She’s truly a superstar in the making and hopefully, the world will wake up and see the absolute powerhouse performer that’s just waiting to be enjoyed.

While most of the cast is great, Mean Girls falters in two key roles and sadly those would be the lead and her romantic interest. Cady’s performer is just not the strongest singer, even when they’re clearly trying to push her vocals through some kind of autotune she’s just so mousey that it doesn’t work. You can look up clips that compare this performer’s version of the song Revenge Party to the one from the stage version and you can tell she’s just not right for this role. She’s not strong, interesting or funny, she feels like she’s scared to be there all the time which makes it impossible to believe that any of the Plastics would even pretend to be friends with her. The other casting choice that just doesn’t work is the love interest Aaron, he’s meant to be this charming guy that Cady instantly falls for and could also reasonably be believable as Regina’s ex… he’s so forgettable that when he wasn’t physically on screen and talking it’s easy to forget he’s in the film. There’s also just no chemistry there, try as they might I can’t believe either of these people would even be in the same school district let alone date. 

Where things kind of pick up is that the 2024 version of Mean Girls isn’t ashamed of being a musical (the promotion might’ve been ashamed of it but the movie itself isn’t), by this I mean that they get that the musical numbers have to be heightened as much as possible in order to not feel awkward and sure enough any time the movie breaks out into musical the stylistic choices for each number are fascinating. Regina’s big number “Someone Gets Hurt” takes everything into a dark sexy place with creative stilted choreography that builds tension, meanwhile the joyous “Revenge Party” turns everything upside down and paints with every colour they can find. Every number tries something different, they’ll change the kinds of camera shots used or adjust the colour grading or just have an entire number done over Snapchat. Sure some of the choices might not be that unique, but they at least make them bold enough that the numbers stand out as a heightened version of this reality.

It is also just undeniable that even though we know all the jokes from the 2004 version, they still mostly work here. The cast clearly reveres the original Mean Girls and manages to sell the jokes they have to retell, they get the timing and delivery right enough that it’s very likely that you’ll still get a laugh when Gretchen yells “You can’t sit with us”, just not as hard as you might’ve laughed when you heard it the first time. It’s a good version of the 2004 jokes, some of which have been updated slightly to work better in modern times, but it’s still just a good version.

Mean Girls 2024 is fine, at best. Its big problem is that it’s an adaptation of one of the greatest comedies of the 2000s and thus it ends up being impossible to avoid making comparisons. Compared to the original this is an inferior version, the jokes aren’t as fresh and the songs feel out of place… on its own merit, if you somehow don’t know the original, the jokes feel out of date and the songs just feel out of place albeit well performed. It’s enjoyable enough but there’s a better version available pretty easily. Maybe it’ll be handy for people who want to know if it’s worth the hundreds of dollars it’ll cost to see the show on stage.