The movie “Mean Girls” is an iconic 2000s film made in 2004. The film shows the stereotypes and clichés from high schools in the early 2000s.
A Broadway musical was created based on the film in 2018 featuring fun songs and talented actors. Recently, a new musical based on “Mean Girls” has been created by the original screenwriter of the 2000s film, Tina Fey. With the two already great versions of “Mean Girls,” the new adaptation isn’t necessary.
The new musical features a cast of mostly new faces. The lead role of Cady is played by Angourie Rice. Her love interest, Aaron, is played by Christopher Briney, who is known for playing Conrad Fisher in the series “The Summer I Turned Pretty”. Lastly, the trio of plastics, Avantika Vandanapu as Karen, Bebe Wood as Gretchen, and Reneé Rapp as Regina.
The film follows Cady Heron, who went from living in Africa her whole life suddenly moving to a high school in Illinois. She tries to make friends at her new school and faces a tough decision between her less popular but more real friends and three popular girls who don’t care about her feelings.
The movie has many memorable moments from the original movie and musical, including Gretchen’s famous catchphrase “fetch” as well as the plastics burn book. Some scenes have changed however, the winter talent show scene has been updated with a new song and choreography.
Overall, this film was not needed. Remakes of classic movies usually never live up to the original, as it’s hard to perfect perfection. Seeing as this movie was a musical, only one actress could sing, and that was Reneé Rapp. I don’t see why Angourie Rice was cast to be the main character if she can’t sing. The actors and actresses were most likely chosen for their acting abilities, not singing.
On the bright side, the acting in this movie wasn’t bad, and it was overall very entertaining. The characters had depth to them, they showed their nice and mean sides pretty well. However, Karen’s character lacks personality. She has no personality other than she is dumb, which is rather annoying.
This movie isn’t worth watching overall. While it’s not terrible on its own, it doesn’t come close to the quality of the original and musical versions. The movie’s attempts at singing and romance come across as very cringe and awkward, making it hard to watch. I wouldn’t recommend seeing it.
