Mean Girls (2024) Before we get into the movie, let's pause a moment to harp on movie studio marketing departments and their new genius strategy for promoting film musicals.......
Or what they think is genius..........
Their brilliant plan......don't let sucker ticket buyers find out it's a musical.....hide the singing, hide the dance numbers, downplay the....uh....the musical part of it.
To which we can only say.....huh?
We first took notice of this upon viewing trailers for Steven Spielberg's remake of "West Side Story".....and the policy seems to have settled in as standard procedure........as if the sight of actors singing and dancing will automatically drive away audiences.
As a marketing strategy, it's dumb beyond any rational description and probably led to "West Side Story" s brief stay in theaters before quickly shuffling off to its ultimate home, Disney Plus.
Similar ploys were used on trailers for the musical remake of 'The Color Purple' and our film for today......writer Tina Fey's Broadway-ized remake of her now iconic 2004 teen comedy starring Lindsay Lohan and Rachel McAdams as that frightening, force-of-nature high school tyrant, Regina George.
So once again we're dealing with a project that goes from movie to Broadway show and then back to a film musical version of the Broadway show.....a la "Hairspray" and any number of those ghastly Disney versions of their Broadway versions of their original animated movies.
The new "Mean Girls", as we guessed, is pre-digested for easy consumption by Gen Z Tik-tokkers. It's edited like an extended music video with, perky songs that sound composed by an A.I. entity after it was programmed to combine Broadway pizzazz with Top 40 bounce.
......that would explain why you'll barely remember the songs even while they're being performed......
And the cast? Good and bad here and there. Lindsay Lohan's role (the sweet, previously home-schooled innocent undone by the unforgiving High School caste system) goes to Angouri Rice. Unlike Lohan's immediate sharp work, Rice comes across as vague, ill-defined and fading into the wallpaper.
Rachel McAdams definitive, etched in acid Queen Bee Regina George becomes woefully embodied by Renee Rapp, too much of a cartoon platinum blonde Medusa. With her Amazonian proportions, she looks more like everyone's evil stepmother than an actual high school student.
The only real standout work here are the designated Greek Chorus outcast couple Damian and Janis, played to the hilt with showstopping fervor by Jaquel Spivey and Auli'i Cravalho. Made us think that Tina Fey would've been better off building a whole new movie around those two characters alone.
To the credit of newbie directors Samantha Jayne and Arturo Perez Jr., this "Mean Girls" does move along,so we honestly can't complain about feeling bored. And they effectively put across the same powerful message as the original film........that the strictly defined social levels of high school may seem crucial while you're stuck there.....but they're as short-lived as a rapidly aging mayfly.....
Plus....let's not forget....there's singin' n' dancin'. 2 & 1/2 stars (**1/2)
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