Mean Girls review – high-school sadism comedy as sugar-rush movie musical – The Guardian
The highschool comedy of status-sadism now reaches the identical third life-cycle stage already achieved by Hairspray, The Producers and The Colour Purple: the film, the stage musical model after which the film model of that. My very own dissident response to the 2004 unique was a imply assessment based mostly on feeling it was inferior to Clueless, Election and 10 Issues I Hate About You, and that it had its cake and ate it on the prettiness-fascism situation.
However I may have paid extra consideration to the showstopping individually humorous strains; screenwriter Tina Fey in spite of everything went on to create an genuine masterpiece with TV’s 30 Rock, wherein she may extra efficiently characterize in her personal individual the everlasting Imply Ladies themes of reconciling success with kindness. Furthermore the Broadway Imply Ladies was a giant enchancment on the movie as a result of the musical style makes every thing extra amusingly histrionic – the “diva” theme made specific – and this film model succeeds in the identical means, though like the next film iteration it sags within the over-extended third act.
Angourie Rice takes the function first performed by Lindsay Lohan: she is good, unworldly teen Cady, as soon as homeschooled by her educational mother in Kenya, and now relocated to america and having to slot in at highschool the place everyone seems to be suspicious of this gawky (however lovely) nerd. Fey reprises her function as maths trainer Ms Norbury, Jon Hamm performs an embarrassing sports-coach-slash-sexual-relations-counsellor – and there’s one other iconic cameo.
Within the time-honoured method, beginner Cady is taken in hand and guided via the high-school jungle by the all-knowing alienated cynical varieties; nice work right here from Jaquel Spivey as Damian and Auli’i Cravalho as Janis. They’re additionally the film choric narrators, bringing us into the motion as if it’s a 112-minute TikTok in a smartphone-shaped display. Damian and Janis, exterior the hetero-patriarchal energy construction, are in an goal place to indicate wide-eyed Cady all the assorted in-crowds and power-bases, of which naturally probably the most fearsome are the terrifying “plastics”, the imply ladies and Insta-princesses who rule the college.
They’re in flip dominated by the pouting queen of capricious blonde cruelty Regina, initially performed by Rachel McAdams and now by Renée Rapp. It amuses Regina to fake to welcome Cady into their group and Janis (who has historical past with Regina) encourages Cady to go together with it and infiltrate this hateful group – however may or not it’s that Cady will like being a shallow blonde “plastic”? Among the many imply ladies themselves, the scene is stolen by Avantika Vantanapu because the outrageously vapid Karen; she will get the film’s greatest tune, Horny, within the Halloween social gathering scene. Busy Phillips is humorous as Regina’s needy mother who needs to be considered one of her daughter’s gang greater than something.
There are many laughs and enjoyable alongside the best way, however the enterprise invoking framing Ms Norbury as a drug-pusher all the time feels strained and unconvincing, with inadequate laughs to make it worthwhile, whereas the ultimate decision and Cady’s studying of life-lessons take some time to reach. Some sugar-rush musical numbers, although, and the traditional gags are successfully delivered.
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