Mean Girls Review
by Harvey S. Karten (harveycritic AT cs DOT com)May 5th, 2004
MEAN GIRLS
Reviewed by: Harvey S. Karten
Grade: B+
Paramount Pictures
Directed by: Mark Waters
Written by: Tina Fey
Cast: Lindsay Lohan, Rachel McAdams, Tim Meadows, Ana Gasterer, Amy Poehler, Tina Fey
Screened at: Loews Village VII, NYC, 5/04/04
Since I was unfortunate enough to go to an all-male prep school, I'm unfamiliar with life among the young women in coed institutions, which is why Mark Waters's "Mean Girls" provided not only an education but a richly rewarded 96 minutes of sheer entertainment. While "Mean Girls" does not pretend to be a satire of American politics like Anthony Payne's "Election" (a Nebraska schoolteacher's attempt to put a roadblock in the path of an overachiever running for class president), the story is probably true-to-life even if the incidents lead one to believe that scripter Tina Fey (Saturday Night Live") exaggerates. Yet Fey's script is based on a nonfiction book by Rosalind Wiseman, "Queen Bees and Wannabees: Helping Your Daughter Survive Cliques, Gossip, Boyfriends, and Other Realities of Adolescence."
Though the film is taut, the malicious gossip, the cliques that become obvious to any observer of a school lunchroom (the cool Asians, the nerdy Asians, the jocks, the gays, the outcasts) are our tribal society's reflection writ small. Like the nations and ethnic groups of the world, the groups within the group at Evanston Township High School (actually filmed in Toronto) are a mirror of the rest of us.
The story rests on a coming-of-age foundation wherein Cady (Lindsay Lohan) home-schooled by her missionary parents in Africa, is introduced to an institutionalized setting in the U.S. for the first time in her life at the age of sixteen. Wholly unfamiliar with the culture of a middle-class suburban school, she is kidded at first, is befriended by a Lebanese-American lesbian, Janis (Lizzy Caplan) and the gay guy she hangs with, Damian (Daniel Franzese), who show her around and by doing so, give us in the audience some insight into high-school politics. While Janis and Damian warn her about the Plastic, the coolest girls in the place and so named because they resemble Barbie dolls, she is brought into their circle, turns from naif to fellow gossip, and must find her way back again to some balance.
While the mean girls are not really that mean a criticism leveled at the picture by some critics they are certainly entertaining. Nor does director Waters fall into the vulgar Farrelly Brothers' shtick but presents the youngsters as inwardly fragile. Long-term beauty queen appropriately named Regina (Rachel McAdams) is the apple that does not fall far from her mother's tree. In her case, the mom (Amy Poehler, who resembles Beverly D'Angelo) defines herself straightaway as one of the cool set and, when a small coed party is held and she discovers a guy and gal in the bedroom, she offers not fruit but condoms.
"Mean Girls" makes excellent use of side roles such as that of math teacher Norbury (played by scripter Tina Fey), who tells the girls that she's divorced and that she's a "pusher" (which the Plastics blow up, spreading the word that she's into drugs); and principal Mr. Duvall (Saturday Night Live's Tim Meadows), who in one case emerges from his office with a baseball bat and has to turn on the emergency water sprinklers to break up a school- wide cat fight.
The one scene that does not ring true involves a meeting of the school in the gym in which Ms. Norbury leads the entire group into a kind of meditation session, asking for hands up from all those who have said malicious things behind their friends' backs (unanimous). Come to think of it, maybe the current presidential campaign in the U.S. is a mirror of the sometimes riotous events that take place at Evanstown HS.
Ms. Lohan is arguably the most adorable and the most talented of teens in the American movies. Director Waters, fresh from his major his with "Freaky Friday" (also starring Ms. Lohan), has racked up another winner, one that neither condescends nor vulgarizes a typical month or so in what may or may not be a typical American high school.
Rated PG-13. 96 minutes.(c) 2004 by Harvey Karten at
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