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Despite the flack that it received this year from a lot of anti-musical individuals that transformed “Mean Girls: The Musical” in to a tik tok meme, at the end of it all Samantha Jayne and Arturo Perez Jr’s film ended up being much ado about nothing. It can’t be that narratives can’t translate in to musicals since “Hairspray” was excellent. But when all was said and done “Mean Girls: The Musical” ended up being an okay movie. It wasn’t what I’d call awful, but it’s by no means in the upper echelons of musicals like “Grease” or even “Teen Beach Movie.”
It’s a just fine, pretty okay movie that just made me want to rewatch the original classic.
New student Cady Heron gets welcomed into the top of the social food chain by an elite group of popular girls called the Plastics, ruled by the conniving queen bee Regina George. However, when Cady makes the major misstep of falling for Regina’s ex-boyfriend, she soon finds herself caught in their crosshairs.
And I tried to be as unbiased as possible considering the 2004 original is one of my all time favorites, but “Mean Girls: The Musical” always had that one indication where it could always go a bit further, but chose to stay as a middling adaptation of the original film. The return of Tina Fey and Tim Meadows does nothing to help the movie as they have reduced on screen appearances and are once again just there to remind us how much better the original movie is. Not to mention there’s not a ton of focus on the whole animal kingdom allegory that made “Mean Girls” so relevant, and still so relevant to this day. And I’m not sure why they cast a charming actress like Jenna Fisher as Cady Heron’s mom only for her to do literally nothing in the whole film.
The numbers are all fairly forgettable and so many of the new twists on the original narrative completely miss the whole point of the message of 2004’s “Mean Girls.” Nevertheless, the cast are all talented and wonderful performers. I was especially a big fan of Renee Rapp as the new Regina George. She is just powerful and intimidating and emphasizes the LGBTQ vibe that the original film implied. Avantika Vandanapu is also very underrated as Karen, the bubble headed part of “The Plastics.” She gets a great musical number singing about the Halloween party which leads into the big shifting of events in the film.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Jaquel Spivy as Damian, the film’s narrator/supporting character. He’s not only immensely talented, but garners most of the film’s laughs with ease. All the parts are there for a great movie, but none of it ever clicks together to create this lightning in a bottle spontaneity that amounts to great musicals. The problem with “Mean Girls: The Musical” is that it’s written like a dumb teen comedy, which “Mean Girls” wasn’t. It was a funny, relevant, and quite intelligent look not only at growing up but at the human dynamic as well.
It’s something the writers of the musical would have been wise to include.