Mean Girls Review
by Andy Keast (arthistoryguy AT aol DOT com)May 11th, 2004
Mean Girls (2004): *** out of ****
Directed by Mark Waters. Screenplay by Tina Fey, based on the book "Queen Bees
and Wannabes" by Rosalind Wiseman. Starring Lindsay Lohan, Rachel McAdams, Lizzy Caplan, Tina Fey, Daniel Franzese, Tim Meadows and Amy Poehler.
by Andy Keast
I went to my high school prom with someone who belonged to a clique of girls that called itself the "Pink Ladies" (see "Grease"), whose leader was -from what I gathered- always at the center of attention and the apex of popularity as a high school student (they had no lettered cardigans, though they did have their own private language). I ran into that same girl some six years later, who confessed to me that she was miserable for those four years. The social network of American high schools seems designed to make every last person in them feel unhappy, and one of the nice things about "Mean Girls" is that it's popular characters are just as sad as it's downtrodden.
Cady (Lindsay Lohan) was home-schooled since she was a small child growing up in Africa, where her zoologist parents lived and conducted research. It's her first time attending a public school in the U.S., and so in her naiveté she almost immediately falls in with the Plastics, lead by Regina (Rachel McAdams) and so-called because of their collective resemblance to Barbie dolls,. Cady's
real friends, Janis (Lizzy Caplan, the disco dancing girlfriend from "Freaks and Geeks") and Damian (Brooklyn actor Daniel Franzese, the timid one from Larry Clark's "Bully") enjoy the idea of her becoming a Plastic, so that they may discover popular gossip. There is much more to the plot, which involves boyfriends, crushes, parties, faculty, et cetera, though what's unique about "Mean Girls" is how it reveals the characters' evil acts as veiled expressions of self-loathing, especially with the Regina character. She has a
particularly
mean-spirited scene where she calls a random girl's mother pretending to be from Planned Parenthood, and there is a subplot that involves a "burn book," which I won't reveal here -but if and when you see it, pay attention to those scenes.
That synopsis may make "Mean Girls" sound like a Solondzian adolescent nightmare. It's not. Director Mark Waters, who surprised me with "Freaky Friday" last year, surprised me again by helming a script by Tina Fey of SNL, which contains a lot of unpleasant truths about high school but never becomes sullen. The result is often pretty funny, has more depth than you might think and features good performances by young actors, namely Lohan, Caplan and Franzese. I liked the fantasy sequences wherein kids pounce on each other like
jungle animals, and an analogy made by Cady that, for the animals she attends school with, the American shopping mall is today's equivalent of a prehistoric watering hole.
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