A few days ago, I went to the premiere of the new "Mean Girls" here in Bangkok Thailand. I've heard about it before and I thought it would be interesting to watch it. Needless to say, I'm a MASSIVE Mean Girls (2004) fan and this rom-com movie has basically molded me into the person I am today. Guilty pleasure? Maybe. But hey I'm proud of it.
Talking about 2024 Mean Girls, of course, I had doubts about how it's gonna be as good as the original one and if you have watched Mean Girls 2 (2011), you'll get how I feel. That one was pretty hard to watch.
Anyway, since I saw that this 2024 version had the same old character and Tina Fey was in it. I kinda want to give it a try in honor of the original 2004 one.
Now, let's start with
📽 The Events 📽
One fun thing about attending the press preview is seeing people dressing up at the event. Because Mean Girls is such an iconic movie for many people (especially, in my generation), that day was really something.
There was a backdrop that you could take pictures with and a fun 360-camera video to do TikTok with. Oh, right the dress code of this event is Pink. Although it was Monday that day. (Get the reference there?)
There were so many iconic looks from the 2004 movie. Can you spot some? Like Regina's prom dress and here the Jingle Bell Rock dress (getting popcorn).
Let's get into...
💗 the Recap 💗
If you watch the 2024 Mean Girls, you can skip this part, since it plays exactly like the original one. If not, here we go!
This story is about Cady Heron (played by Angourie Rice) a girl, who has been homeschooled in Africa her whole life and this is the first time she'd experience "the school", better yet American High School. She had 2 new friends, Janis 'Imi'ike (played by Auli'i Cravalho) and Damian Hubbard (played by Jaquel Spivey). They are a little weird and might not be the best role models as a good student, but they're nice and take Cady in their group.
However, as a hot and cute new girl as she is, Cady is approached by another group of friends. A very powerful and impactful girl group of the school, which everybody called "the plastic", ruled by Regina George (played by Reneé Rapp) and followed by her 2 loyal minions, (1) Gretchen Wieners (played by Bebe Wood), the one who holds all the secrets and (2) Karen Shetty (played by Avantika), the not-so-smart but sexy one. They invited Cady to have lunch with them aka take her in as a member of the plastic. Cady was having fun getting the attention of being in the plastic and was unsure how Janis could hate Regina that much.
On Halloween night, Cady saw Regina kiss the boy from her calculus class that she liked, Aaron Samuels (played by Christopher Briney). She then got really mad and decided to get on an evil plan with Janis and Damian to take Regina down. And they succeeded. Regina was no longer the hottest queen bee of the school and Cady gained much confidence and slowly gained Regina's place. By that, Cady started to lose sight of the true friendship of Janis and Damian. So they fought and Cady was all alone.
Finding out the truth about herself being exploited, Regina was furious and exposed the "burn book", in which the plastic wrote mean things about every girl in the school and acted innocent that Cady, Gretchen, and Karen did that. That incident created the most chaotic fight in the school and the teachers had to put it to stop. In the end, at prom night Cady learned about the meaning of friendship and the value of self that there's no winning in putting other people down. By that, she was able to make amends with Janis, Damian, and everybody.
Now it's time for...
💗 the Review 💗
Not saying this is the best way to review it, but I'll have to compare it with the original movie and tell you how it's different and how I think about it.
First of all, it's a MUSICAL! That I wasn't expecting at all, because I didn't watch a trailer or anything beforehand. So, I was really surprised how the story would go. As I said, the storyline is the exact same, but the difference is that there are lots of musical numbers, which changes the pace of many scenes in the original. The ones that used to take time to tell the story were cut short and put into a song, whereas the other ones that weren't mentioned much in the original were getting more "air time" in this version.
Let me elaborate on that. What I felt is that the character that didn't get much attention in the 2004 version, in this one, were getting their own song (some more than one song), so we can see more dimension of the supporting characters from the 2004 version.
I really enjoy Cravalho's performance as Janis. In this movie, we can see a lot more of Janis, of how artistic and what a good and loyal friend she is. Through multiple solo numbers, Cravalho had killed it, vocally and performance-wise.
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On the other hand, a supporting character like Gretchen, in this movie was toned down to be almost a mere gossip friend, who doesn't have much depth of a personality which I was kinda disappointed and that also goes with Karen too. So both of them were not as charismatic as the original version as I hoped.
Another /meh/ character is Cady Heron, who although she was the main character, she didn't really command me to watch her as much. I felt much more drawn to Janis and that is one major dislikeness from me about this movie.
However, the one thing that the movie did make the right choice is casting Reneé Rapp as Regina. This is an example of the new interpretation of the original character with the twist in the new casting. I've thought that I might be biased from liking the original one so much, but the character of Regina is really something that I can be open-minded to. I realize I didn't want the same cast to play the same plot. I do wanna see a new cast that could actually bring something new to the original charm of the character. While almost none of the characters did it, Rapp was killing it. So fetch!
Overall, it was underwhelming for me as the 2004 version was already at the top of my list, so I know it's hard to top that. I like the different take on making it a musical. I like music so I have no problem with that. But I guess the things I like don't really add up enough to the weird and kinda off-vibe casting and the pace of storytelling is just a little strange to follow. So, I'd rather stick with the 2004 version, but I might sing some songs from this one.
Here comes...
💗 the Reflection 💗
The key message of this movie is finding the value that you believe in. In this chaotic world with lots and lots of distractions, like social media and popularity, it's really easy to be swayed in a direction that everything you do is solely to be accepted. Sometimes it could be so much that you don't even realize or be aware of how you lost a part of yourself that you even used to be proud of.
Like Cady, she was so good at mathematics, but being a mathlete doesn't seem "cool" enough in high school society, where people value looks and appearances over intelligence. That's why she let herself flunk the test and give away this good quality of her, just to be accepted as a plastic.
I think we all did that, once or twice especially when we were young and naive and we only learn better now as we mature and see what really matters in life. So, I learned to never lose sight of what's important and don't forget how every decision making can take a turn to change your life. So, be aware of that.
The quote in the beginning says "Plastic is forever". When we're young, we'll truly think so, but in real life, it's not. We're gonna find new society, new friends, and new values that we wanna hold on to. So remember, nothing is forever and everything depends on right now, so go make the best of it.
PS. All the official movie photos are from source
That's a wrap for my #nomnommovie review post for today. I hope you're still with me here, just leave the comments to let me know or discuss film theory with me. Til next time...
Let's stay supportive of the entertainment industry and keep watching great movies, guys
Khob khun kaa,
Nomnomnoodle 🍜