The new Mean Girls movie debuted on January 12, 2024, and it’s already being described as the worst movie of 2024. This version of the iconic comedy film series is directed by Mark Waters and written by Tina Fey.
Mean Girls is a movie about female high school social cliques, school bullying, and the damaging effect they can have on teenagers. Mean Girls is a big franchise with two movies and a Broadway musical. The new movie stars Renné Rapp, returning to her role as Regina George. Tina Fey returns to her iconic role as Ms. Norbury, and Tim Meadows returns as Principal Duvall.
Tina Fey originally wrote the 2004 movie that everyone fell in love with, and with this new Mean Girls movie, she wanted to combine the Broadway musical with the original movie. She worked with Lindsay Lohan, who played the original Cady Heron, in the 2004 Mean Girls movie. The new Mean Girls movie starts with Cady Heron, played by Angourie Rice, singing a song from the original Broadway musical called “It Roars.” The song takes her to transferring from Kenya to North Shore High School. Cady, a nice home-schooled teen meets the nerds, jocks, alphas, and betas, and attracts the notice of the queen bee. Regina George (Reneé Rapp, who played the role on Broadway) next to her side are Karen (Avantika Vandanapu) and Gretchen (Bebe Wood). We meet the Plastics when they sing a Broadway Original song “ Meet The Plastics.” Some viewers were upset because they changed the lyrics of the song and now focus on Regina George and the other Plastics are not seen as much as people wanted.
In this original film, Cady befriends a pair of unpopular art kids, Janis and Damian who are played by Auli’i Cravalho and Jaquel Spivey. Cady meets the Plastics and is now in Regina’s clique. Slowly Cady turns into a copy of Regina and betrays her only real friends in the process of a plan that went wrong. This teaches Cady a lesson that judging others won’t make you better than them.
Some people who have never seen the Mean Girls musical seem to like it more than people who have watched the musical multiple times. There is a 10-year gap from the original movie and the fans of the 2004 movie have grown up and have a different perspective of the Mean Girls trilogy than new incoming fans. Some viewers are upset about all the ELF cosmetics placement in the new movie because it’s over-promoted and unnecessary. The new Mean Girls movie is being taken as a joke and is rated 6.3/10 on IMDb and under 70% on multiple sources. Actress and writer Tina Fey said in an interview that she is proud of this movie and it’s a good way to end the Mean Girls trilogy.
