Mean Girls 2024: Tina Fey’s Broadway musical hits the right note

The phenomenon of a non-musical film being adapted into a stage musical, which is then adapted into a film, is surprisingly common, for example in recent films such as 2023’s The colour purple and that 2022 Matilda show. Some of these adapted movie musicals have even eclipsed the original film versions in the pop culture legacy Hairspray And Little shop of horrors.

The 2024 Mean Girls is the latest entry in this very specific genre. It is an adaptation of the 2018 Broadway musical, which in turn is an adaptation of the 2004 film starring Lindsay Lohan and Rachel McAdams. The new Mean Girls probably represents a bigger burden than previous movie musicals adapted from musicals, as the original film had a huge impact on pop culture and came out right at the dawn of the internet age, giving it a very special kind of cultural longevity.

Directors Samantha Jayne and Arturo Perez Jr., making their feature debut, have a lot of work ahead of them, even with a script by Tina Fey, who returns after penning both the musical and the 2004 film. They make some confusing decisions, such as keeping some Nell Benjamin and Jeff Richmond songs from the Broadway show that don’t really highlight the cast’s singing, at the expense of some more entertaining and dynamic songs.

But they also do a pretty good job of updating the details of the high school drama for the social media age. Supported by a (mostly) stellar cast who make the iconic characters their own and showcase their spectacular singing voices, Mean Girls is a fun little update, but one that never transcends the experience of the original film.

[Ed. note: This review contains minor setup spoilers for Mean Girls (2024), as well as the original 2004 movie.]

Like the first film, 2024s Mean Girls is about Cady Heron (Angourie Rice), a bright-eyed, bushy-tailed teenager who transfers to North Shore High School for her freshman year after a lifetime of being homeschooled in Africa. She finds it difficult to adapt until artists Janis (Auliʻi Cravalho) and Damian (Jaquel Spivey) take her under their wing. Unexpectedly, the school’s most popular and reckless student, Regina George (Reneé Rapp), decides to invite Cady to join her and her loyal lackeys, the Plastics: the dim-witted, pretty Karen (Avantika) and the insecure secret-keeper Gretchen (Bebe). . Wood).

At first, Cady dismisses Janis’ warnings about Regina, but then Regina steals Cady’s crush, Aaron (Christopher Briney), from under her nose for no reason other than petty jealousy. So Cady teams up with Janis and Damian to infiltrate the Plastics and take down Regina.

The cast of Mean Girls (2024) has a lot of big shoes to fill, both from the original film and the Broadway musical. Most of them perform, show off their vocal power and add their own flair to the larger-than-life characters – with the exception of Rice. Unfortunately, she simply doesn’t have the strong vocals of Rapp or Cravalho or the comedic timing of Spivey or Avantika. She gives Cady a nice wide-eyed naivety, but her singing can’t keep up, especially compared to the rest of the cast.

This wouldn’t be such a glaring problem if the first few songs weren’t mostly about her. To accommodate Rice’s singing voice, Cady’s initial solo was changed and some of the more vocally demanding parts in the group numbers went to other characters. The first section of the film just flirts with being a musical: Jayne and Perez Jr. present the audience with better singers and numbers without fully committing to them, instead pulling out a few uninspired songs, like the new musical “What Is, if?” and Cady’s romantic overture “Stupid With Love.”

Thankfully, these boring songs are no indication of the fast-paced musical theater that the film ultimately offers. If Jayne and Perez Jr. give the film the musical it’s meant to be, it’ll be an incredibly good time. The two best numbers — “Revenge Party,” an ensemble song-and-dance routine overlaid on a montage of Cady, Janis and Damian getting back at Regina, and “World Burn,” Regina’s big villain song — are absolutely great. They are also the ones who bring out the theatricality of the musical version the most and embrace what it is meant to be.

Musicals are very often exaggerated versions of reality. How else can the periodic interruptions in song and dance be explained? Therefore, all characters are even stronger versions of their original counterparts. And the actors deliver. Cravalho and Spivey are more dynamic, darker and more dramatic than the versions of their characters in the first film, which makes sense in a musical with many groups in which they star.

For her part, Rap’s Regina is more breakneck and reckless, with an iconic voice that permeates the rest of the soundtrack. Avantika’s Karen is emptier; Wood’s Gretchen is more insecure. Overall, everything works – except for Rice, who highlights Cady’s ingenuity a little to a lot in the first act, making her transformation into a verified queen bee harder to buy.

The second act of the story – from both the original film and the Broadway stage version – is sped up and ultimately muddled in this adaptation. Fey’s script doesn’t address Cady’s transformation into a mean girl enough to make the transition believable. It also doesn’t help that Rice never quite sells Cady’s ruthlessness. She seems to be in the spotlight a little too much, wide-eyed and being pushed around by too many other people.

Both the original film and the Broadway musical deal with the new version of Cady, the popular Plastic, who has become tough and becomes everything Regina once was. But Mean Girls (2024) not. Everything about Cady’s arc is a little flattened and less, well, mean.

The rest of Mean GirlsHowever, it’s enough fun to almost make up for a mediocre lead. The middle of the film – from the legendary Halloween party with sexy costumes to Regina’s bus incident – is the most fun, as it fully indulges in musical theatrics Also pushes Cady to the sidelines in larger pieces of music. There are some entertaining updates from the film’s period, reflecting much of the story’s usual gossip and phone calls on social media platforms like TikTok. (There’s a hilarious running gag involving rapper Megan Thee Stallion.) And there are enough nods to the source material to keep fans satisfied. (Did I giggle at the mention of Glen Coco? Of course I did.)

Mean Girls (2024) probably won’t replace the original 2004 film in anyone’s mind. The beginning and end — the most Cady-centric parts — aren’t strong enough to carry the rest of the film, especially when you compare Rice’s interpretation of the character to Lindsay Lohan’s original film performance or Erika Henningsen’s strong singing in the original Broadway cast recording.

But Rapp, Cravalho and the rest of the cast hold the film together and generally make it a good time. There are enough engaging songs to compensate for the boring ones, although the ratio isn’t quite enough to make it a transcendent musical experience. (There is always one a few duds in a musicalbut there should be more bangers.) Overall, the year 2024 Mean Girls hits the right tone and continues the legacy of the original film rather than completely remaking it.

Mean Girls hits theaters on January 12th.