Watched: 04/25/2025
Format: Paramount+
Viewing: second
Director: Mark Waters
Back when we were doing the podcast, we should have done this movie as part of our "high school movies series". Alas, we didn't get to it.
But if you listened to those episodes, you would have come across my inability to access a lot of high school movies, largely because I felt they offered a false proposition: that in high school, there existed a clique people aspired to join or who were a group to emulate or who had influence. And that those people were varying levels of mean.
I have since learned: no, man, that may have just been you (me). Maybe because I moved to a new school and no one explained to me who was supposed to be "popular". And if that was going to shake out at the first high school I attended, I missed it gelling as I moved away after Freshman year.
So, that was my context the first time I watched this. I've kind of accepted since that some people very much felt in and out of groups in high school, and carry that feeling for life. I think it's why everyone - if you ask them - will tell you how they were an outsider in high school, but the math doesn't add up. You can't have 99% outsiders. And I've never heard anyone say "actually, I was super cool in high school".
Rewatching this movie for the first time in two decades, I liked it well enough in 2006 (here's that post), I liked it a lot more the second time around. In part because the world is not currently in "Mean Girls (2004) is the best thing ever!" mode, which makes it hard to watch a film.
First - Tim Meadows is maybe the greatest weapon in comedy, and he should be in everything. I know this is far from his movie, but he's really f'ing funny in this. But so is everyone. It's wild that the comedy genre kind of fell apart shortly after this, because we were really humming along with good stuff around this period. If you never saw Baby Mama, starring Fey and Poehler, that movie is hysterical.
And, as this is a Lacey Chabert-oriented review series - she's @#$%ing hilarious in this as Gretchen Wieners. Which was one of my memories about this movie. She's good as the straight-man in stuff like Hot Frosty, but she's got some chops.
It's kind of shocking how good *everyone* in this movie is - not just our SNL staples in Fey (who wrote it), Poehler and Tim Meadows, but all of the high school kids. The "Plastics". The "art kids". The whip pans to the rest of the students expressing their opinions. Rachel McAdams managed to make Regina George iconic and has managed to go on to wildly diverse work since. Amanda Seyfried is insanely funny. Lohan shows why - had she kept it in check - she'd probably be a major star now (and she may be on her way back).
Looking at my review from 2006, I stand by the idea that what it's doing isn't necessarily new, and is even derivative at times, but these days I have a greater appreciation that sometimes all you have is execution - there's some concepts that are both evergreen and need to work a certain way to tell a story.
Through the lens of "in groups exist", Mean Girls isn't just funny, it now feels like the definitive statement on the idea for a generation (I am not sure Heathers is Gen-X's statement on the idea, but it also is not not a particular Gen-X take). The concept of Mean Girls is so in the culture that the name of the movie can be applied as a punchline to individuals. People know what a Regina George is.
I do think the movie is saying something I didn't give it credit for the first time - which is hinting at the idea that the clique stuff sort of works itself out your Senior year.
In general, I liked it better this time, all around. But I also really noticed what a weak plot device the Burn Book is. Anything that is written in Sharpie is going to be easily identifiable by handwriting, and would anyone really care about a few mean comments? Would it really make a school explode if *everyone* was insulted?. But you also need it, or you don't get the final act of the movie.
It's interesting now that we're so far out, what's aged well and what hasn't. This movie was pretty early out of the gate with having a gay main character in a teen movie. But then the Lizzy Caplan character, his best friend, is *furious* that the rumor is that she's a lesbian? And both can be true in real life, but it feels weird in a 2 hour movie (and cute arty girls are never seeing a shortage of guys happy to prove that rumor wrong).
I am unsure if today's kids would be scandalized by the sexuality and meanness of the characters. Maybe not. It's pretty tame. I did recently watch a video of someone watching the pilot of Glee and they were positively clutching at their pearls. So I don't know. But when you grew up on incredibly horny teen media as Gen-X did, it just is.
Anyway, it's a perfectly good movie. Maybe curious it's the cultural juggernaut it is, but good for Tina Fey and her bank account.
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