Mean Girls (2024) is an adaptation of the Broadway musical based on the original Mean Girls (2004). It re-tells the original story we all know and love, showing the fight for popularity and looks in high school, while in a modern setup and with songs accompanying the story.
Being a musical, the most important aspects are the songs and how they are delivered. The best songs are the ones performed by Regina, Janis and Damian. The audience can clearly notice their highly skilled singing skills and end up delivering an amazing performance each time they are featured.
The actress of Regina, Reneé Rapp, who was cast as Regina George in the original Broadway Musical as well as being one of the biggest rising popstars of these past few years, makes an amazing effort to make her character and the songs the most remembered part of the movie. Her voice is truly amazing, and it shines through in “World Burn,” an anger song filled with high note after high note, all delivered flawlessly, resulting in the standout between all the songs in the soundtrack.
With Regina being such an iconic character from pop culture and her actress being one of the main reasons people are going to watch this new iteration, it feels as though the roles of Gretchen and Karen were thrown aside, showcasing this by cutting their verses from “Meet the Plastics”.
This is another big problem with the movie: changing or cutting out verses, or even cutting songs completely from the movie. The movie can’t commit fully to its musical aspect, with instrumentals of songs turned into a more pop version and vocals that sound more like spoken poetry than singing.
The single biggest issue I had was all the songs that featured Cady in it. I was able to listen to some of the original songs of the Broadway musical, and they are executed flawlessly by the original singer of the musical. The versions of “Stupid with Love” and “Revenge Party” have such a different feel than their original songs, and do not match the energy of the situation. This ends up being a complete downfall in her character, especially comparing her to the other characters and their songs.
One of the most popular aspects of the original “Mean Girls” were the outfits. Girls today still dress up as the Halloween costumes, or do outfits inspired by the iconic pink looks, as they were a staple in pop culture.
The new movie also fails in this aspect, but not mainly because of the rethinking of the outfits in a more modern time but the lack of quality that these clothes have. This is a big issue as the movie follows micro-trends in clothing, which in our current times, get old extremely quickly and don’t look fashionable making characters such as the Plastics not that fashionable or trendy.
A factor I am almost never aware of in movies is product placement, but this movie does it so many times that even I realized. The makeup brand Elf appears many times throughout the movie, with Cady even saying the full name of a lipstick as if it were an advertisement. This would not worry me normally, but at points it felt as if I was watching a very long commercial.
Finally, while the movie can’t fully commit to being a musical, it lacks the comedy aspect as well. While watching the movie phrases and one-liners used in the original mean girls are thrown around hoping that the audience laughs because of nostalgia, but most of them are set up extremely lazy or don’t even have a set up. The jokes from this movie that are not old ones, are not ground-breaking or something you will remember.
Mean Girls (2024) is another lazy attempt at a remake not properly done, while not fulfilling fans of the original movie or fans of the Broadway musical.
