After 20 years, on Jan. 12, the Tina Fey (who played Ms. Norbury in the remake) original is reimagined in a more modern light. Unlike the 2004 “Mean Girls” that we’ve all learned to love, the 2024 remake is more musically based, pulling music from the “Mean Girls” musical. Although the musical part shocked me, the high-school humor still made me laugh.
I love the transition the producers made with social media and clothing, making this movie more relatable to current high-school students. The music was fun and catchy, but I was sad that they only used certain parts of the songs. It’s like they wanted the musical aspect of it, but didn’t want to make it too much of a musical so they limited the songs making the movie some kind of weird hybrid. Aside from that, I loved the casting of the main characters. I think that Reneé Rapp made a perfect Regina George, along with Auliʻi Cravalho as Janice Ian, Angourie Rice as Cady Heron, Jaquel Spivey as Damian Hubbard, Avantika Vandanapu as Karen Shetty and Bebe Wood as Gretchen Wieners. I feel that the actors and actresses conveyed their characters perfectly.
Spoilers
There were a lot of differences between the two movies, for sure– the newer “Mean Girls” is a lot less hostile than the 2004 original. The original “Mean Girls” uses a lot of slurs and derogatory language, that was all cut out of the remake. I personally liked the hostile aspect of the 2004 movie and I feel like taking that out of the remake took away from how mean the girls, mostly Regina, really were. I also feel that in the remake, Cady Heron seemed a lot more like a blank-slate character. She didn’t have a lot of personality, which I understand is because she was homeschooled in Africa her whole life, but in Africa, she still had human interaction. Also, they changed the fact that in the original her parents were forced to come back to the States for work. In the remake, Cady argued with her mom about wanting to go to the States for school and actively pushed for it. During the Christmas performance, I was disappointed when Cady didn’t save the performance like she did in the 2004 version. It also took away from her character, making her a lot less likable.
I like that they kept the idea for the burn book, which is the staple of the whole movie. I also enjoyed how much more intense Regina’s public humiliation was. The addition of social media made the rumors about her spread like wildfire. I also loved how they conveyed Janis’s character. I think they made her more genuine and sarcastic in the remake. I definitely preferred Janis in the newer movie over Janis in the original.
All in all, I enjoyed the remake. It did Cady dirty, but the other characters make up for her lack of personality.
3/5 stars
