‘Mean Girls’ Review: Reneé Rapp Shines but this Plastic is not Fantastic

“What’s wrong with me?” sings Gretchen Wieners (Bebe Wood) about 30 minutes into Mean Girls, the new film adaptation of the stage musical, which is an adaptation of the 2004 movie, which itself is an adaptation of Rosalind Wiseman’s 2002 nonfiction book Queen Bees and Wannabes. And that question could easily be asked of the 20-year-old film – what’s wrong with it that it needed to be remade? Watching the latest version, you might assume that the original was unendingly offensive or dated, given how much this remake sands off the jagged edges and adds in half-baked footage of social media and other elements of modernity. In doing so, and with the addition of lackluster songs, this Mean Girls feels less like a necessary reimagining of the original material and more like a dim photocopy of the mid-aughts modern classic, released solely to line the pockets of the filmmaking team.

Like so many cinematic reboots, remakes, and regurgitations, Mean Girls finds itself simultaneously pulled in two directions. On one hand, it wants to update and restructure the original film for a new generation (as the marketing puts it, to the horror of millennials, “this isn’t your mother’s Mean Girls”), amending storylines for more contemporary audiences and adding new jokes and plot beats to freshen things up. And on the other hand, it finds itself so overshadowed by the looming legacy of the original film that it seemingly has a checklist of famous quotes and moments that it must perfunctorily check off so as to not seem too subversive or disrespectful.

Regardless, the film’s superstructure remains the same. Cady (Angourie Rice) is a new transfer student at North Shore High School in the suburbs of Chicago, having moved from Kenya, where her mother (Jenna Fischer) had been homeschooling her. She soon finds the vicious social circles, cliques, and exclusionary attitudes of her new classmates to be even more intimidating than any predatory animals she may have encountered on the savannah. Luckily, she’s swiftly scooped up by two art students who make their own way through the school ecosystem – Janis (Auli’I Cravalho) and Damian (Jaquel Spivey). The eccentric pair educates Cady on the most important aspect of high school – finding out where you fit in. At first, they advise her to keep away from the trio of uber-popular girls who sit at the top of the school’s food chain, dubbed the Plastics. They’re led by Regina George (Reneé Rapp), the gorgeous, powerful, and vicious queen of North Shore. Beneath her are her underlings, the anxious Gretchen Wieners (Wood) and ditzy Karen Shetty (Avantika). But after Cady gets surprisingly adopted into this elite inner circle, Janis and Damian concoct a plan to get back at Regina for her many misdeeds using their newest friend as a double agent. But things don’t go as planned for either side of the secret war, leading to chaos, unplanned casualties, and frenetic choreography.

Obviously, the biggest difference between the original film and this one is the addition of several musical numbers, with music by Jeff Richmond (the husband of screenwriter and co-star Tina Fey) and lyrics by Nell Benjamin. Nearly half of the songs they wrote for the 2018 Broadway production have been cut or replaced with new tunes, and the remaining songs mostly fall into three categories – rock songs sung by Regina or Cady, rock songs sung about Regina or Cady, and most rare of all, comedy numbers. The latter classification, being the least representative on the soundtrack, is particularly mystifying. The 2004 film is uproariously funny, with dozens of jokes and one-liners having since been catapulted into cultural colloquialisms and conversational shorthand. This alleged musical comedy is shockingly light on songs that are actually comedic. The only original song that remains with the purpose of making the audience laugh is “Sexy,” a humorous number sung by Karen about the dominance of sexy Halloween costumes on what’s supposed to be a scary holiday. The stage musical was similarly light on funny songs, opting instead for an abundance of power ballads and blandly inspirational group numbers in a pale imitation of Wicked. But at least the Broadway production had two songs for Damian that are both funny and important to the show’s plot or themes. These are scrapped, severely reducing his character, which is a shame because Spivey (a Tony nominee for his performance in the Best Musical-winning A Strange Loop) can clearly sing the hell out of any song given to him.

One of the most shocking things about the songs (besides the unmemorable melodies) is that the lyrics are markedly less clever than the dialogue scenes that they interrupt. Tina Fey’s screenplay smartly adds new jokes and adjusts old ones, some of which are just as hilarious as the legendary punchlines and quotes from the original. But before you know it, here comes another song with unfunny, bland words. Some of the lyrics are particularly egregious, with peculiar, first-draft-esque rhymes. At one point, Janis sings, while painting a picture of the revenge they’re going to carry out on Regina, “Imagine a party with dresses and cake/And singing and dancing and cake.” So, we’re just rhyming “cake” with “cake?” Is this used as a joke to show Janis is running out of party-themed images while describing her plan? Nope, it’s shot and performed in a way that hurries past it without acknowledgment, or worse, with implied embarrassment. At another moment, Cady sings about her new love, Aaron Samuels (Christopher Briney), who she’s fallen for during math class, and she declares, “I’m astounded and non-plussed/I am filled with calculust.” This wordplay is odd, but at least they’re trying for a pun. But because of how it’s performed and directed, the “t” at the end of “calculust” is totally unintelligible. This speaks to the general tone of the musical numbers, which are either strangely underplayed (I wrote “low energy” in my notes three times during my screening) or executed with frantic dance moves and a shaking camera in a way that distracts and disorients.

Said musical numbers are directed by the team of Samantha Jayne and Arturo Perez Jr. (both making their feature debuts) with a general concept that can only be described as half-hearted. The first song – an introductory number sung by Janis and Damian – is smartly sung into a front-facing cell phone camera as if they’re recording a TikTok, establishing a way to depict the fourth-wall-breaking nature of musicals. The next song – an establishing song for Cady called “What Ifs” – seemingly takes place inside the character’s head, with dreamy dancing and an adjusted aspect ratio, which is abruptly ended when a rude student bumps into her. So it seems, in the language of the film, the musical numbers will either take place in diegetic performance scenes or within a character’s imagination. In this way, the directing duo are clearly attempting something like what Rob Marshall pulled off to great acclaim in Chicago. But this concept isn’t consistent. At times, characters will sing purely in the real world of the film, and at other times, huge production numbers clearly take place inside of a fantasy world. And occasionally, the lighting shifts abruptly, or the aspect ratio changes to separate the musical numbers from the dialogue scenes, but at other moments, these visual cues are simply not used. It indicates a lack of total forethought as to what the musical numbers represent to the characters and, thus, how the audience should interpret them. If there was a plan for each song and how they should all specifically be depicted and processed by viewers, it’s severely unclear.

Rice leads the film with an energy that makes her very sympathetic, but part of that comes from the trepidatious way that she approaches her songs. Unfortunately, her voice is pleasant but not powerful, and her numbers all have a feeling of nervousness to them. Whether that’s an intentional character choice or an anxiety on the actress’s part about hitting the correct notes isn’t apparent. She’s markedly more confident in that film’s latter half once she’s taken over from Regina as head of the Plastics, with those scenes allowing her to make bolder choices. Wood doesn’t make much of an impression as Gretchen, likely because nearly all of her memorable moments from the original film have been cut or altered (save for her insistence on trying to make “fetch” happen), and the only song she’s given is the aforementioned melancholy “What’s Wrong With Me?” As the terminally clueless Karen, Avantika is a hoot, getting all the best lines in the film and delivering them perfectly. She also gets the best new joke, and she nails it – when Regina is bemoaning a huge pimple on her face, Karen consoles her by remarking, “It’s sexy, like a face breast.” But the film’s standouts are, perhaps unsurprisingly, the three actors who have already proven their talent in previous musicals. Spivey (astoundingly, making his screen debut) is simply iconic as Damian, tossing off both one-liners and high notes with ease. Cravalho’s Janis is charismatic as hell, and she gives the best vocal performance in the entire film with the yawningly inspirational eleven o’clock number “I’d Rather Be Me.” But the true star of the movie is Reneé Rapp. She presents a totally different Regina from Rachel McAdams’s legendary work in the original film. This Regina derives her power from what she doesn’t do instead of what she does do. She’s underplayed and effortlessly cool, growling and purring her lines while darting her eyes around like the apex predator that she’s likened to. At one point, she says to Gretchen, “You’re literally being so annoying,” with a cruel smile that’s simply devastating. And her vocals are flawless. She smartly chooses to deploy her full belt only when absolutely necessary, clearly aware and in full control of her talent and power, much like the character herself. No wonder she played the same role on Broadway. But it’s not all subtlety – she gets some genuinely hilarious comedic moments during the final Spring Fling dance scene, where she’s encumbered by a huge neck brace. Simply put, Rapp is sensational.

This Mean Girls truly isn’t your mother’s Mean Girls, in that said mother’s Mean Girls is funny, clever, and unafraid to be, well, mean. The new musical adaptation struggles to find a purpose for its existence. Rapp does her best whenever she’s on screen, but if your musical comedy isn’t funny or musically satisfying, what’s the point?

Grade: C

 Paramount Pictures will release Mean Girls only in theaters on January 12.