Mean Girls Mean Girls



“BEEKEEPER used NIN for the trailer so thats an automatic yes.” I agreed with Ben that that was cool, but I wanted to see the new MEAN GIRLS more.

MEAN GIRLS seemed more enjoyable to write about. I don't know what I mean by that. Maybe because I talked about it with more people. I talked to maybe three more people about MEAN GIRLS than I did BEEKEEPER (I talked to 0 people about Beekeeper).

MEAN GIRLS it is, then.

We decided on a 4:10 showing. There was a 5-something showtime as well in standard, but Ben wanted to see the RPX showing: One, because unlike the 5-something showtime, this one was far from sold out, giving us a less claustrophobic experience, and two, because we didn’t really know what the RPX experience was, still.

RPX is 4 dollars extra, making it 12 dollars per seat, which is still OK, at least in terms of New York movie prices. Plus, it’s at Regal Delancey, which has the best seats in any theater I’ve been to in the area. This is an important trait in Regal. Yeah, I could review movies at Metrograph, but I would have to spend more money for more uncomfortable seating, at the expense of seeing something gayer - not to mention I risk the chance of running into girls from Hinge who I matched with but our conversations never progressed past that.

When I first saw ads for MEAN GIRLS 2024, my initial reaction was that it’d be a sequel-y-spinoff type thing, kind of like a PG-13 version of those AMERICAN PIE spinoffs. It was originally slated for direct-to-stream, and maybe that’s why I am relating them. But the movie itself didn't feel "cheap" like what I relate with direct-to-stream, especially the amount of shit that is direct-to-stream.

Instead, this movie is a pretty straight-up word-for-word-ish remake of the original - with music from the Broadway musical. I'm not sure if the music is word-for-word or if they have been changed. I have not seen it.

So this 2024 version is a movie, based on a musical, based on a movie, which, it turns out, is based on a book.

Reminds me of STREET FIGHTER: THE MOVIE: THE GAME.

It was the first day of actual snow in New York this winter. I think it was the first day of actual snow in New York if you included last winter, as well. Snow is worth appreciating for like, two hours max. After that it's best to go inside and take advantage of being inside.

It really was a beautiful day out. But you can only bask in nature for so long before you get brought back to, like, the fact that it’s really regular shit. Snow, wind, the sun, temperatures - it happens every day, rain or shine, weather. Tuesdays have happened every week as far as I have been alive, at the very least, to my knowledge. But now with Regal Tuesdays they have given me something more structured to look forward to. The snow isn't going to get in the way of that. I'm not going to go do something stupid like snowboard. I'm a movie fanatic.

Ben texted me at 4:10 saying he would be there at 4:20, which was annoying to me that he would be late, but the actual trailers (ACTUAL trailers - not the bullshit insider extras about some tv show) didn’t even come on until after 4:20. What the fuck??? IF THE SHOWTIME SAYS 4:10, THEN AT THE VERY LEAST THE TRAILERS COULD COME ON AT 4:10. IF THE LIGHTS ARE ON UNTIL 4:20, THEN SHOWTIME IS AT 4:20.

Mean Girls is a movie about Girls who are Mean. If you’ve seen Mean Girls - and you have - then you know what Mean Girls is about. This film follows the original closely, and quite often word-for-word. But it also has music with singing in it.

About the songs - they are good. I don’t know if my opinion on this has any merit, because I don’t know anything about musicals. Bare minimum they are fun, at best they are catchy. None of the songs overstay, and sometimes it seems like a snippet is thrown in just to remind you that it’s a musical. I have no complaints about this. It never gets annoying. That’s all I really want to say about the musical shit. I just don't want to have to talk about it that much.

The music does seem to take the place of some of the plot. A lot of the teacher stuff is gone here that I really liked from the original. Tina Fey and Tim Meadows are at least back, playing the same characters; however in this universe, they are married. It really takes me out of the movie a bit when this gets brought up, because it makes me think this is in some way a sequel - it is my recollection that they weren't married in the original but they were at least flirtatious - but then when I would hear the name Regina George, or You-Go-Glen-Coco, I remembered that it was a remake. 3

Fey and Meadows are the only ones back for this one (except for at least one cameo-y role that's only really to please the audience). I don’t know why, but Tim Meadows just kills me. I love his voice and demeanor. He has a lot of the same dialogue from the original, with a bit of it re-worked, but he keeps the deadpan wit, or whatever people say.

Jon Hamm is brought in to play Coach Carr this time, instead of Dwayne Hill, who I had to look up. And this time, he isn’t making out with Asian students behind the bleachers. Instead, he’s used as a gratuitous cameo, like it's funny that it’s Jon Hamm, or something. Sadly, he doesn’t do anything funny - it isn’t like Hill had a huge role, but it was at least memorable - "Don't have sex in the missionary position, don't have sex standing up, just don't do it, OK, promise?" - nothing Hamm does here is quite as good. I suppose Hamm is playing his 30 Rock character here, another Fey joint, where he kind of just, gets whatever he wants, and people like him, as is predicated on his good looks and charm. So here he plays that Jon Hamm, the 30 Rock one, where he gets both a paycheck for being in Mean Girls 2024, and gets to wipe clean the bad look of being the teacher who makes out with kids, because Tina Fey thinks he is handsome.

I’ve talked a lot about the teacher roles, which is funny, cause they take up 10 percent of the runtime at most.

I’m not familiar with any of the people who play the student body here, but I like everybody.

Main girl Cady is played by Angourie Rice, who looks like a young Jenna Fischer - which is great casting, as Fischer plays Cady’s mom in the movie. It is easy for me to subconsciously compare Rice to MEAN GIRLS OG Lindsay Lohan, but I really don't need to here, especially when things are so word-for-word, it doesn’t really matter in comparing, like if it were different Jokers or something. I like Rice, she plays Cady well, and does the progression from New-Kid to Plastic really well. I thought Lohan did, also. It feels like a natural transition, and it's cool how it plays out over the course of seasons and holidays.

The Plastics, Regina and Gretchen and Karen, are cast well too, with some updated new-movie-style diversity (Karen is played by Avantika Vandanapu, which is racially different than the original Amanda Seyfried - I like both of them, for different reasons - and I’ll say this, Vandanapu has my favorite song of the musical portion - I really do get irked by gratuitous PC shit in movies - I am a millennial, bare in mind - but here, it isn’t an issue).

Oh and I haven't even mentioned the new Damian, who is now played by Jaquel Spivey, a POC. He reminds me of Titus Andromedon, one of my favorite characters of all time, from Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, another Fey joint. He makes an already funny character funnier. There are slight cultural updates, like for instance at the holiday talent show thing he performs a foreign song, which we find out is a French version of the iCarly theme. But he holds down the funny-ass gay guy character well. Most of my laughs came from him.

Regina George is played by Reneé Rapp (I hope I used the correct little line above the e, not sure which is which), who looks kind of like Busy Phillips. Busy Phillips is here too, by the way; she plays her mom, replacing Amy Poehler. Busy is awesome as hell here, with mostly reused lines, but she made me just about bust a gut a couple times. I am concerned about the lack of Poehler for some reason though, like it makes me think Fey and her are having a falling out, but it makes sense to have a younger mom like Phillips play Mrs. George, a cool mom like that.

The updated, re-written, and added stuff is generally good here, too. When I say it's word for word for the most part, I mean for the most part. Some of the jokes are I guess updated for a new audience.

It takes place in current times, so now we get a lot of thematics about social media or whatever the hell. And it works here, generally - I do wonder how long we will be able to see iMessage bubbles appear on screen, or see a collage of random people we don’t know posting TikToks about how Caty slayed at the talent show, before it starts to look trite. Like in 2010, movies like Easy A would have to insert some thing about Facebook, or a joke like, “Why is [character] updating us about their lives online, it’s so mundane.” But I guess the iMessage bubble thing kind of works. I’m obsessed with knowing what will age well or not, because I don’t want to be embarrassed about what I say about it later on.

Characters refuse to say “social suicide,” because I guess we don’t use that word anymore, and it's noticeable because those lines from the original are so... iconic. I guess it's a statement about something or rather. We talk about things like slut-shaming now, being a gay ally, but it's played in a fun enough way, and at least it gives us something new to see in the modern Mean Girls universe. It doesn't feel like pandering, but it easily could, if one were reading a synopsis.

It's a fun watch! We both laughed a good amount, and it was never boring. Sure, it isn't that much work to make a new film when you borrow 80 percent of the dialogue from an older one, but, really, so what? The fun watch is the important part here.

Same themes, same lines, same settings, same jokes, same exact story. Sure - I don’t like it as MUCH as the original - I mean, how often is the remake superior - like, THE THING? And maybe there's mega oldheads out there who prefer the original, original one. I suppose a huge fan of musicals could prefer this. But again, it's a fun watch. I wonder how it would present to somebody who hasn't seen the original, but minus easter eggs and little pieces of dialogue that you'd need to have seen the original to appreciate, the storyline holds up.

OH!!! Also, I think the RPX seats aren’t really worth it at all, except that the theater was almost empty. It was exceptionally loud, which I guess is the point of RPX, to the point where your seats are vibrating.

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