Many hit films get adapted into Broadway musicals, but few ever have a full circle moment of becoming a musical film. Among the rare film-to-stage-to-film journeys is Mean Girls, the hit 2004 teen comedy from the mind of Tina Fey, which she and her husband (composer Jeff Richmond) began adapting for the stage in 2013. Mean Girls comes back to the screen as a live-action musical-ish remake, remixing what worked well about the original film and stage adaptation, along with a few original touches that let this film stand on its own.
(Jojo Whilden/Paramount)
Having spent the majority of her life home-schooled in Kenya, Cady Heron (Angourie Rice, Honor Society) arrives at North Shore High School as the equivalent of wide-eyed bushy-tailed prey for the school’s top predators, “The Plastics” – Regina George (Reneé Rapp, The Sex Lives of College Girls), Gretchen Wieners (Bebe Wood, Love, Victor), and Karen Shetty (Avantika, Spin). Two outcast besties – Janis 'Imi'ike (Auli’i Cravalho, Moana) and Damian Hubbard (Jaquel Spivey, A Strange Loop) – take Cady under their wing to help her survive. But when Cady is unexpectedly invited to spend a week eating lunch with The Plastics, they concoct a plan to take down the school’s reigning monarchs.
The marketing for Mean Girls mostly shied away from its musical aspects, with trailers making it look more like a straight remake of the 2004 film. While this is unquestionably a screen adaptation of the stage musical, it also exercises considerable restraint, which is sure to displease its most eager fans. The majority of the songs are set within dream sequences, often finding comedy through quick pauses to the “real world” as a reminder. But this isn’t always the case, which makes it feel somewhat awkward when a song is a more traditional sing-your-feelings musical moment, like Karen’s “What’s Wrong With Me?”
Not all of the Broadway show’s songs make the jump to this film adaptation, and those that do are often truncated. “Meet the Plastics,” for example, only uses Regina George’s introduction. On the stage, it’s three songs in one – countermelodies for Regina, Gretchen, and Karen that satisfyingly overlap by the end. Here, the unaltered title feels moot as it’s essentially “Meet Regina.” Most of the songs cut from the show make sense, as those story moments are more quickly told through dialogue, although fan-favorite songs like “Where Do You Belong?” are sorely missed (briefly included as an in-joke at a different point in the story). Cady’s introductory song (“It Roars”) has also been replaced with the film’s lone original song (“What Ifs”), which is so short that it’s quickly forgotten. The arrangements of many of the songs are also drastically different, with “Stupid With Love” sounding like a different song here.
(Jojo Whilden/Paramount)
Directors Samantha Jayne and Arturo Perez Jr. treat many of the songs like mini music videos, which helps avoid comparisons between this version of Mean Girls and other movie musicals set at school, like Grease and the High School Musical films. Acting performances are strong across the board, but with the original film being so iconic, its biggest pratfall tends to be when a quotable line is recycled from the original. Thankfully, Tina Fey’s updated screenplay is full of clever twists that subvert expectations enough to prevent viewers from getting caught up in moments of uncanny similarity. Still, when you’re trying to recast career-defining roles for the likes of Rachel McAdams, Amanda Seyfried, and Lizzy Caplan, nobody here is genuinely set up for success.
The 2024 version of Mean Girls is enough like the stage version to feel like a film adaptation, but faithful enough to the 2004 flick that it loses much of what makes the musical special. It’s about the safest way of adapting it at a time when movie musicals are seldom bankable. Speaking of which, the budget on this version feels painfully low at times, evidently made for streaming and given a theatrical release to fill holes in the schedule. While it mostly yields a satisfying result, at the end of the day, the best film version of Mean Girls is the original, and the best musical version is the stage production. In the words of a mathlete, it’s not greater than the sum of its parts.
I give Mean Girls (2024) 3 out of 5 candy canes.
Mean Girls opens in theaters nationwide on Friday, January 12th.
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