‘Mean Girls’ Review: Tina Fey’s Regurgitated Movie Musical Is a Tuneless Mess – Hollywood Reporter

Mark Waters’ hit comedy in regards to the savage jungle of highschool cliques, Imply Women, had sufficient instant-classic dialogue and memorable characters to change into a touchstone for the era both in or contemporary out of their teenagers when it was launched in 2004 and people who have found it within the years since. With screenwriter Tina Fey persevering with to steer the automobile, the property navigated the transition to Broadway musical in 2018 with loads of its authentic charms intact and a few even fortified because of the expressive magic of characters bursting into songs that reveal their interior lives.

The present was by no means going to maintain Stephen Sondheim awake nights with its workmanlike tunes composed by Fey’s husband, Jeff Richmond. However Nell Benjamin’s incessantly intelligent lyrics delivered laughs and director-choreographer Casey Nicholaw’s aptitude for kinetic showmanship made it a high-energy explosion of hormonal insecurity, malice, vulnerability and hard-won life classes. A top-notch solid didn’t damage, both.

However all of the effervescence and enjoyable have been drained out of the fabric on this labored reincarnation, a film musical made by individuals who seem to have zero understanding of movie-musical vernacular. Debuting co-directors Samantha Jayne and Arturo Perez Jr. are greatest often called collaborators on the FX shortform collection Quarter Life Poetry, however their uneven work right here appears firmly entrenched in Perez’s music-video background. The identical goes for choreographer Kyle Hanagami.

The songs seldom spring organically from the story and extra typically really feel so awkwardly shoehorned in that you just come to dread them. What’s worse is that the music is so gratingly over-produced and studio-enhanced you miss the excessive of characters spontaneously singing. By way of musical deficiencies, that’s a deal-breaker. The ultimate nail within the coffin is the inventive workforce’s choice wherever potential to border the songs via social media. The machine is used so unrelentingly you begin to surprise why your entire film wasn’t made on TikTok. Perhaps it could be much less of a garish eyesore on a smartphone.

I want I may say the solid supplied some redemption, however solely Auli’i Cravalho as Janis, the punky outsider performed within the authentic film by Lizzy Caplan, seems sufficiently in her pure component to make a lot of an impression.

The most important disappointment, arguably, is Regina George, so divinely rendered by Rachel McAdams within the 2004 film and by Taylor Louderman on Broadway that the identify alone has change into synonymous with evil teen queen, a younger lady as witheringly imperious as she is beautiful. Reneé Rapp stepped into the position within the second yr of the present’s New York run, reprising it right here in what have to be stated is the not-so-great custom of display high-schoolers of their mid-20s.

Onstage, Regina strutted into each scene like a Bond vixen, bathed in a pink glow that made each her magnificence and her cruelty appear virtually otherworldly. Right here, she’s nasty however seldom humorous, maybe reflecting a shift within the tradition that now makes it more durable to take advantage of comedy out of bullying snark. The numbers that elevated Regina to arch-villain standing within the musical have been flattened into generic anthems of self-love and superiority so muddied by a brutally homogenized pop sound combine that half her lyrics are garbled.

The story hits all of the acquainted marks. Cady Heron (Angourie Rice) has been home-schooled by her mom (Jenna Fischer) in Kenya, making her transition from the African savanna to the wilds of North Shore Excessive a serious cultural jolt. She will get a 101 intro to the varsity’s rigorous caste system from the 2 college students who stay determinedly outdoors it, Janis and her “virtually too homosexual to perform” greatest good friend Damian (Jaquel Spivey, the gifted star of A Unusual Loop on Broadway).

They warn her to provide a large berth to “The Plastics,” the trio consisting of Regina and her minions, Gretchen (Bebe Wooden) and Karen (Avantika), described by Janis and Damian as “shiny, faux and arduous.” However when Regina takes an curiosity in Cady — albeit a probably conniving one — and invitations her to hitch them for lunch, Janis and Damian see it as a chance to get some filth on the imply women.

Cady’s spying task turns into sophisticated when she develops a crush on her calculus classmate Aaron (Christopher Briney), who seems to be Regina’s ex. At a Halloween occasion the place Cady’s corpse bride costume makes her the odd one out (“Should you don’t costume slutty, you’re slut-shaming the remainder of us,” Gretchen tells her), Regina snatches Aaron again, as a result of she will. That leads Cady, Janis and Damian to regroup for a revenge plan, however Cady’s indoctrination into The Plastics turns into so full she loses sight of herself.

There’s one thing depressingly rote about all this, as if Fey has instructed the story too many instances to seek out something contemporary in it, past the superficial Gen Z pandering of fixed cellphone screens. Even the position she reprises from the unique movie, as math instructor Ms. Norbury, lacks zest. One other recruit from 2004, Tim Meadows, scores just a few gentle laughs because the principal. However the handful of stars in secondary roles, together with Jon Hamm because the health club instructor and the unique Broadway Gretchen, Ashley Park, because the French instructor are both wasted, or within the case of Busy Philipps as Regina’s “#AgingHotly” mom, excruciatingly excessive.

Whereas Australian actor Rice is ok because the initially guileless Cady, not one of the characters has sufficient definition to make you overlook their extra incisive predecessors. Having a key 2004 Imply Women star make an prolonged cameo simply serves as a reminder of how far more of all the things the unique and its stellar ensemble had, whether or not it’s subversiveness, wit or coronary heart. Even the sooner film’s savvy tackle teen anxiousness, social hierarchies, peer stress, feminine toxicity and energy dynamics feels scarcely warmed over on this lackluster therapy. Maybe the 20-year-old materials is simply previous its prime?