“Mean Girls – The Girls Club”
A failed attempt
The new “Plastics”: Avantika Vandanapu as Karen Shetty, Angourie Rice as Cady Heron, Renée Rapp as Regina George and Bebe Wood as Gretchen Wieners (from left)
© 2023 Paramount Pictures.
With “Mean Girls – The Girls Club”, a remake of the 2004 film wants to conquer cinemas. But can you still feel the charm of the original?
A movie based on a Broadway musical based on a movie – can that work? 20 years after the cult comedy “Girls Club – Be careful!” (Original title: “Mean Girls”) the musical adaptation “Mean Girls – The Girls Club” will be in cinemas on January 25th – again based on the script by Tina Fey (53).
The cast is promising: Angourie Rice (23) takes on the role of the somewhat unworldly teenager Cady Heron (originally played by Lindsay Lohan), who has just moved to the USA from Kenya. As on Broadway, singer Reneé Rapp (24) embodies the infamous “Plastics” leader Regina George (originally played by Rachel McAdams). Also starring are Auli’i Cravalho (23) as Janis Sarkisian, Jaquel Spivey (25) as Damian Hubbard, Christopher Briney (25) as Aaron Samuels, Avantika Vandanapu (18) as Karen Shetty and Bebe Wood (22) as Gretchen Wieners to see. Only Tina Fey as Ms. Norbury and Tim Meadows (62) as Director Duvall return from the original film. Busy Philipps (44) inherits Amy Poehler (52) as Regina George’s mother.
Familiar territory, new sounds
The script is largely faithful to the original film: Cady Heron is new to high school, attending public school for the first time in her life. The teenager befriends her classmates Janis and Damien, who introduce the insecure Cady to the world of an American high school. Cady soon comes into contact with the “Plastics”, a clique of popular girls, and becomes friends with them. Janis wants to use the chance to play the “Plastics” against each other with Cady’s help and ruin Regina George. But Cady becomes more and more “plastic” herself and even falls in love with her ex-boyfriend Aaron Samuels…
Even the dialogues are almost identical – but some classics are missing. The big difference is primarily the musical aspect – the actors repeatedly break out into song and dance in unexpected places. In addition, scenes filmed in TikTok format are intended to appeal to a new generation of viewers.
Conclusion
Thanks to numerous legendary scenes and quotes, the original “Mean Girls” film is still firmly anchored in pop culture, especially among millennials, and enjoys cult status. Tina Fey’s attempt to captivate members of the younger generations, Gen Z and Gen Alpha, is only partially successful with the new adaptation.
The musical interludes often seem unnecessary and forced, and the integration of social media elements is more of an attempt than a successful implementation. Even sentences that come from the original script occasionally seem out of place and forced. The film also fails to shine in terms of fashion: the “Plastics” outfits look more flashy and cheap than enviable or trendy. Everything that made the original film so clever, funny and at the same time touching is missing from the new version. If you didn’t know that both scripts were written by Tina Fey, you could easily think that “Mean Girls – The Girls Club” was a cheap copy of the original.
One of the few highlights is the performance by Reneé Rapp, who with cheeky charm manages to at least partially fill the big shoes of Rachel McAdams as Regina George, as well as a short surprise appearance by Lindsay Lohan.