A classic teen comedy gets fletch new faces and a zippy new musical spin
Mean Girls
Starring Reneé Rapp, Angourie Rice, Auli’I Cravalho & Christopher Briney
Directed by Samantha Jayne & Aururo Perez Jr.
Rated PG-13
In theaters Friday, Jan. 12
It’s time to go back to high school with this zippy new musical spin on a teen-comedy classic.
The revamped Mean Girls combines the storyline, deets and characters of the original film—released 20 years ago—with songs and showtunes from its later incarnation as a Broadway musical, which opened in 2018 but shut down two years later due to the COVID pandemic.
And it’s unquestionably grool.
That means groovy and cool, for anyone un-hip to the many memorable lines from this oh-so-quotable coming-of-age tale about a young math nerd, Cady (Angourie Rice), who becomes an unlikely competitor to her high school’s alpha female, Regina George (Reneé Rapp), while joining Regina’s tight clique of bratty hangers-on (Bebe Wood and the mono-monikered Avantika).
Mean Girls fans—especially the next-gen crowd to whom the new film is clearly targeted—will spot a host of recognizable fresh faces. Rapp is a 24-year-old singer/actress who’s reprising her leading role from the Broadway version; she also plays Leighton Murray in Mindy Kaling’s teen-comedy Max series The Sex Lives of College Girls. The Australian-born Rice got her start in The Nice Guys with Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe, and she’s also appeared in Spider-Man: Far From Home, Sofia Coppola’s remake of The Beguiled and alongside Miley Cyrus in an episode of the horror anthology Black Mirror.
Christopher Briney, who plays Cady’s dreamy crush—and importantly, Regina’s ex-boyfriend—Aaron, also stars in the Prime YA video series The Summer I Turned Pretty. Tina Fey, whose script provided the quippy zing for the 2004 film, reprises her original role as math teacher Ms. Norbury, along with fellow SNL alum Tim Meadows, who once again mines the low-key hilarity of the school’s ever-unamused principal Duvall. Fey also joins Lorne Michaels, the iconic producer of Saturday Night Live, as a co-producer—financing the bottom line of this production, where Mean Girls means serious movie business.
Cady’s friend Damien (who’s “almost too gay to function”) is revitalized by a scene-stealing Jacquel Spivey, who honed his award-winning, Grammy-nominated chops in musical theater. Auli’i Cravalho, who plays Damien’s bestie and Cady’s art-nerd pal Janis, previously provided the soaring voice of Moana in Disney’s 2016 animated musical fantasy.
There are loads of fan-favorite callbacks to the original film (which sparkled with now-indelible performances from Lindsay Lohan, Rachel McAdams, Amanda Seyfried, Lacey Chalbert and Lizzy Caplan). Watch for a very special cameo at the math competition! But this new Mean Girls stakes its own claim as a top-notch new adaptation with a vibrant singing cast and some truly standout performances, especially from Cravalho, Rice and Rapp in absolutely showstopping numbers like “World Burn,” “Revenge Party,” “I’d Rather Be Me” and “Someone Gets Hurt.”
Tina Fey almost breaks into a song; Fargo’s Jon Hamm (below) doesn’t come near it, but he certainly makes the most of his two scenes as Coach Carr, who pulls no punches as he hits below the belt in the health class he also teaches. (I can’t wait to see all his outtakes in the bonus materials when the movie comes to Blu-ray.)
It all adds up to a mile of smiles, an engagingly witty cautionary tale about the bubbling caldron of peer pressure, snobbery, gossip and backstabbing fibbery that is—and has always been—high school, wrapped now in catchy songs and an uplifting teen-spirit message about true friendship and acceptance, and never pushing anyone in front of a bus.
And if anything can, indeed, make fetch happen, it’ll be the infectious musical fun of Mean Girls. So get in, loser!
—Neil Pond
The Media Tourist 