The 2024 “Mean Girls” movie hit theaters on Jan 12th and has not been taken well. The movie took on its adaptation of the Mean Girls Musical made in 2019 but instead added product placement and bad casting. The movie follows Cady Herron, the new girl at school, through a cautionary tale of backstabbing, heartbreak, and forgiveness. The movie’s message is very clear: You should be able to be yourself without putting others down. The movie repeated this idea multiple times in 2004 and in the 2024 adaptation. “Calling someone stupid doesn’t make you any smarter.” “Calling someone fat doesn’t make you any skinnier.” These are direct quotes from both movies. So, if a good message is being represented, why is this movie still bad?
For starters, the casting for Cady Heron could’ve been better. Casting someone like Renee Rapp (Regina George) who had a Broadway debut at just 19 years old right alongside someone like Angourie Rice (Cady Heron) was not a good call. Renee Rapp does music for a living and while Angourie is a good actor she isn’t a good singer. Many of the songs she sang in the movie were changed from the original Broadway musical to fit her range better. Since the music is a huge part of this movie it causes Cady’s character to be dull and only a shell of what was expected from fans. Rice’s singing performance heavily affects the plot flow of the story. One of the best casting decisions though was Auli’i Cravalho as Janis and Jaquel Spivey as Damian. These two are both fantastic singers and play off of each other on-screen in a very natural manner giving a balanced comedic relief duo.
When watching the film, it felt like the target audience was Gen Z, which sometimes worked, but it often came across as cringy. An example of this was all the TikTok references. It felt like they made the movie “modernized” through the eyes of adults who have only ever used Facebook. The topic of social media and their take on cancel culture was a good idea with bad execution. It was good enough to get the point across but didn’t impact the audience. A lot of the time I couldn’t tell if the use of social media was satire or trying to be relatable. They put in weird evil edits and only showed social media in a bad, cringy light. On the other hand, having Gen Z as the target audience worked in some favors. The costumes were all great and very modern. Each fits the characters and their personalities very well. Also changing Janis’s back story from the original 2004 film worked better for this remake. Unlike the original movie, Janis was actually gay instead of just being accused of being gay. This little change related more to the newer audiences and made a relatable character for the 2024 reprise.
The scenes they decided to cut and add were very odd and sometimes felt unnecessary. One of the most important scenes they cut from the original was when Regina called a girl’s mom pretending to be planned parenthood. I think this was an important scene because it showed how much of a master manipulator Regina was. Without scenes like this, it took away from Regina’s character and why she was the “queen bee”. Instead of keeping a scene like that to further a character, they added Cady’s life in Africa and her whining about wanting to be normal. This scene in the beginning didn’t add anything, it just felt like filler and a way to throw in a badly sung song. One of the scenes, they did add that I appreciated though was the encounter between Regina and Cady in the bathroom at prom. They both apologized to each other. This was one of the only scenes put in to further the movie’s theme of supporting others.
If they had better actors and taken a little bit more from the original I think this movie would have been great. They did add some progressive things into the movie though which I thought made it better. They changed Cady’s mom to be a single mom, promoted body positivity and queer rights, and they also took out details like a teacher sleeping with a student. This movie was obviously not meant to be taken very seriously but it definitely didn’t live up to the hype. For everything that was wrong with the movie, there was something added that redeemed it halfway. Overall the movie was a 5/10 I’d watch again.
