Mean Girls Review – 'Snappy musical successfully updates the original' – Empire

When is a reboot not a reboot? Perhaps when it’s the Imply Women reboot, which is predicated on the 2017 Broadway musical, which was tailored from the 2004 movie (itself loosely impressed by the 2002 non-fiction parenting ebook Queen Bees And Wannabes). Whereas it’d really feel like nu-Imply Women comes with plenty of sparkly pink baggage hooked up, within the occasion, from the zippy opening prologue quantity onwards, it’s very a lot a case of speedy boarding onto a first-class flight of fancy that requires zero familiarity with earlier incarnations, however which manages to concurrently reward loyalists with some respectable inside jokes.

One of many nice issues in regards to the swap to musical format is that the songs give us a direct window into characters’ emotions and motivations, breaking the fourth wall in ways in which would really feel straight-up clunky if there wasn’t a tune concerned. Characters aside from Cady Heron (Angourie Rice, within the Lindsay Lohan position) really feel extra fleshed out, whereas Cady’s voiceover from the unique is gone — who wants an interior monologue when you possibly can flip to digicam and belt out a fully-fledged energy ballad with a military of choreographed back-up dancers?

The fundamental template stays the identical. New pupil Cady is befriended by two likeable misfits, Damian (Jaquel Spivey) and Janis (Auli’i Cravalho), who persuade her to assist them mess with A-list clique The Plastics, sabotaging their chief Regina (Reneé Rapp). So the plot hews fairly near the unique. It’s the moments that really feel like unique Imply Women cosplay that generally fall flat, whereas brand-new traces, refined updates and evolutions are the place the movie shines. Dim bulb Karen (Avantika Vandanapu, firing on all cylinders) breathlessly comforting Regina over an unlucky huge zit on her face and touchdown on, “It’s attractive, like a face breast,” works manner higher than many of the events the place we hear an endlessly meme’d 2004 line, quoted verbatim.

Other than being straight-up humorous, 30 Rock-style, Tina Fey’s script additionally has an ear for the best way that the well-meaning language of recent progressive discourse might be weaponised in dangerous religion. Witness Regina whispering huskily to Aaron that she has “plenty of unresolved trauma from the best way issues ended with us”, or Cady getting known as out at Halloween: “In case you don’t costume slutty, that’s slut-shaming us.” New technology, new vernacular, similar mind-games.