When “Mean Girls” came out in 2004, we were less than a year into the Myspace experience, living in a time when girls attacked via three-way phone calls. This time around, “Mean Girls” (the 2024, musical version) lives and dies by social media.
The movie, based on the musical that premiered on Broadway in 2018, opens with Janis (Auliʻi Cravalho) and Damian (Jaquel Spivey) making a TikTok video in a garage. This video turns into the film’s opening number, “A Cautionary Tale,” and Janis and Damian step into their roles as narrators ready to shepherd us through what we’re about to experience. It may just look like a TikTok video – iPhone aspect ratio and all – but if it were a real one, these kids would be going viral. Cravalho, who made her acting debut as the voice of Moana in the titular 2016 film, and Spivey, who originated the starring role in the critically acclaimed “A Strange Loop” on Broadway, are not just actors who can also slightly sort of sing. They’re true singers, real performers – unfortunately, a trait sometimes hard to come by when it comes to movie musicals these days.
The opening of “Mean Girls” has a creative edge to it, updating the source material from 2004 and setting the audience up for the type of silliness you want from a movie like this. But while “Mean Girls” has plenty of humor and fun to offer, its strong points simply make its weaker moments that much more frustrating. Most of that frustration can be pinned to the arrangement of the songs themselves, continuing a broader trend in movie musicals where it feels like the mix is used to hide the performer’s vocal quirks instead of elevating them.
“Mean Girls” essentially follows the plot of the original film. Cady Heron (Angourie Rice), fresh off homeschooling in Kenya, moves back to the U.S. and starts at North Shore High. She befriends Janis and Damian, then inadvertently finds herself invited to lunch with the most popular and meanest girls in school, the Plastics – Gretchen (Bebe Wood), Karen (Avantika) and Regina George (Reneé Rapp). After Regina sabotages Cady’s crush on Aaron Samuels (Christopher Briney), Janis and Damian convince Cady to end Regina’s reign as Queen Bee.
Not only does “Mean Girls” follow the same plot, it also carries over what feels like at least 75% of the original dialogue – although some of those lines lack the bite of the 2004 version. The smartest update it does make, however, is how it uses social media, both within the story itself and as a storytelling device. Breaking the fourth wall is generally easier to contend with onstage than it is on screen, but the film is able to side-step this hurdle by doing things like having Janis and Ian sing their opening song via TikTok – a format that’s all about breaking the fourth wall. “A Cautionary Tale” isn’t the only number to take advantage of this. “Sexy,” which Karen sings right before a Halloween party, starts as a “get-ready-with-me” style TikTok video, shifts into a series of dance videos and then ends with Karen killing it on the dance floor at the party itself.
When the songs aren’t delivered with the help of social media, there’s usually a break from reality – and when there’s not, the numbers tend to work less. The best of these is “Someone Gets Hurt,” which occurs at that same Halloween party as Regina seduces Aaron. Dressed like the angel of death, she pauses the commotion of the room and slinks her way through its frozen inhabitants, all while receiving a stellar assist from a wind machine. She is both seductress and puppeteer, maneuvering a paralyzed Cady into a state of shock, readying her for the moment that Regina kisses Aaron right before her eyes.
But for each number that stands out from a design standpoint, there’s one that’s failed by the musical stylings, or one that feels disorganized in its presentation. The issue with the sound mixing affects Rice in particular. She’s a quieter singer than most of her costars, with a soft, lilting voice. When her numbers come around, the music mellows out significantly as if to match her energy, but all it does is wash out the tone of her voice instead of supporting it. On the other end of the spectrum, when Janis sings “I’d Rather Be Me” – a high energy, rocky number – the instrumentation is incredibly toned down, feeling weak against Cravalho’s very strong timbre. This is ostensibly the 11 o’clock number of the movie, a song where our full attention should be on the performer singing it. But “Mean Girls” often seems hesitant to sit with a moment, and “I’d Rather Be Me” is no exception. Janis runs through the halls as she’s singing, often with her back to the camera, never staying in one place for too long and never allowing the message of the song to fully resonate.
There is one performer, however, who is often given the space to just stand there and sing. With a movie like “Mean Girls,” it’s difficult to get the original performances out of your head. Most of the cast handles that challenge gamely, with Avantika and Christopher Briney standing out in that regard. But Reneé Rapp makes Regina George her own – and that’s a tall order when it comes to that 2004 Rachel McAdams performance. Where McAdams was sharp and coy, Rapp is bluntly physical in a way that’s as seductive to Cady and her minions as it is to any of the boys in the story. During the song “Apex Predator,” she stalks through the halls as teenagers act like wild animals around her. But with her wolfish gaze, she’s the one who feels more like an animal ready to pounce.
So, is “Mean Girls” fetch? Not quite. But that doesn’t stop it from having fun while trying to make fetch happen.
