The original Mean Girls, written by Tina Fey and released in 2004, was an instant sensation among teenagers and remains popular to this day.
Cady Heron, a teenager homeschooled in Africa by her scientist parents, moves with her family to the suburbs in Illinois. She attends public school for the first time and immediately learns about the ironclad laws of popularity that rule her school and divide its students into cliques. Cady is taken in by an elite group of students dubbed “The Plastics.” Throughout the movie, she realizes how her new group of friends earned their name.
The movie was so successful that a musical version took the stage in 2017. The gained its own set of fans, but did not reach the same level of fame as its on-screen counterpart.
To once again play off of the success of the original film, a new adaption of the musical Mean Girls was released in movie form in January 2024. The new version, also directed by Tina Fey, stars Angourie Rice as Cady Heron and Reneé Rapp as Regina George. The film received some love following its release, but that is not to say it is without critics.
“I didn’t think it was that bad. It definitely did not need to be made, and the music wasn’t great, but I had an okay time,” said junior Max Siskin.
Many audience reviews on Rotten Tomatoes similarly stated that the new movie was absolutely unnecessary.
Despite being an adaptation of the musical version, the 2024 Mean Girls is mostly similar to the plot of the original movie. The few deviations that were made have only annoyed fans. One highly criticized change was making Regina a lot less “diabolical.” In the original film, you would truly root for Cady because it was shown repeatedly how backstabbing and malicious Regina was. But in the modern version, she is only genuinely mean to Gretchen.
Another obvious change is the addition of musical numbers, which weren’t featured in any of the trailers for the film and caught many viewers completely off-guard. Complaints also focused on the style of the music, which is more pop than show tunes.
“I feel like if it was truly supposed to be a musical, there should have been more of a Broadway feel regarding the action and the way it was shot,” said sophomore Aubrey Kollar.
The new adaptation deviated from the original in other ways. Many people complained about these areas where the new version branched away from the 2004 movie. One of the biggest complaints was the incessant product placement.
One scene from the movie consisted of a character sitting at lunch, drinking a seltzer. But not just one seltzer, many seltzers, each of a different brand and clearly placed with the logo facing the camera.
Another example of this was a partnership with ELF make-up, which many viewers found to be smothering due to its constant presence throughout the movie. In one scene, Cady refers to an ELF lip gloss by its full product and color name, and in another shot, an ELF product falls into a sink.
Another element of the movie that became a topic of discussion was the casting choices. Since Reneé Rapp played Regina in the on-stage show, she quickly became a fan favorite, with viewers saying she not only has charisma befitting the character of Regina George, but also a strong singing voice. Some other favorites have been Avantika Vandanapu as Karen and Auliʻi Cravalho as Janis ‘Imi’ike.
However, these strong performances cannot make up for the disappointment of Angourie Rice as Cady, whose voice has been called weak and faltered by her lack of emotion when she sings. Viewers believe she does not bring the same level of energy as Lindsay Lohan in the original movie.
“It was terrible. The movie never needed to be made. The original was good, and they just added bad stuff that made it worse,” said junior Isabel Epstein.