A major drama has unfolded this past week. No, we’re not talking about those Oscar snaps. We talk about all those things Mean girls strikes That flooded social media after the January 12 film premiere.
If you were on TikTok last week, you may have even seen a popular video in which the audience audibly groans about the overuse of music in the film. It has since been removed for copyright reasons, but the fact remains that there are so many Mean girls fans were not happy with this modern update of the 2004 classic.
Of course, part of that disappointment was due to the film’s marketing by Paramount Pictures, which promised a simple remake and nothing more. In reality, the film was a remake of the movie Mean girls musical that appeared on Broadway in 2017. That meant lines like “Is butter a carb” were suddenly replaced by endless songs written by Tina Fey’s husband, Jeff Richmond, and Nell Benjamin. And the original musical wasn’t exactly that Hamilton.
But the viewer can be forgiven for not knowing Mean girls was a musical. After all, similar stories have happened The color purple And Wonka, both of which benefited from trailers that glossed over their musicality. In this case, however Mean girlsThe real problem was that it was quite middle.
Just like she did with the original Mean girls, screenwriter Tina Fey lent a sly humor to this new version. But it rarely emerged – buried, as it was, under layers of contemporary updates. Some of these were necessary: characters could now use social media, for example. They also referenced veganism and gender-neutral bathrooms instead of slut-shaming each other (see: “Boo, you whore,” which was rightly missing). Coach Carr’s gendered talk was more in tune with the sensibilities of 2024. And there were no hard lines.
But Fey’s new screenplay refused to make the changes fans actually wanted to see, aka making Regina George one closed lesbian. Instead, Reneé Rapp had to fill in the blanks and play the character as queer in her own mind. Additionally, the screenplay left out classic lines like “It’s like I have ESPN or something” in favor of new jokes that were often included. (Also missing: the beloved “Oh my god, Danny DeVito, I love your work.”)
Even the fashion updates didn’t work. While the film is generally reminiscent of current Gen Z fashion, it failed to create something as iconic as Regina’s pink cardigan from the original film. Paper Magazine was able to conclude this from this just the trailer of the moviethis new Mean girls skipped creative contemporary costumes in favor of superficial 2020 updates.
So when all was said and done, the film delivered exactly what it advertised: just a remake of the wittier 2004. Mean girls. Yes, the songs were there, but they didn’t add much. (More on that later.) This placed an unfair burden on the remake’s cast. That’s not to shade Reneé Rapp, who had leftover rizz and ate it in every scene. But it does mean that hilarious artists like Busy Philipps had to work hard to escape the shadow of their predecessors. And considering that this “new” version had the same plot, characters, and dialogue as the original, it practically begged viewers to compare these actors to their 2004 counterparts. Clearly, nothing compares to Amy Poehler playing herself calls her a ‘cool mom’, sorry.
To her credit, Tina Fey has tried to turn this cinematic cash grab into something new. “It’s tricky because jokes have to be surprises to work,” she said Entertainment weekly. “There’s a little bit of nostalgic dopamine that we get, but I learned through the musical that if you want it to be played as a joke, if it’s just the same, it’s not going to play the same. So finding genuinely new moments and then finding places to subvert what you expected from the old line was really helpful.
But Fey still left a lot of old jokes behind to keep fans happy, which made for an uphill battle in her quest to create a “new one.” Mean girls. And then there were those really meh songs. They actively worked against everything Fey could do.
When Mean girls hit on Broadway in 2017, was very well received mediocre reviews – mainly because of the music. Songs like Gretchen Wieners’ “What’s Wrong With Me” barely scratched the surface of these characters’ psyches, serving more as musical bookends than insightful showstoppers. Instead, they stated the obvious in a serious, often direct manner – and without catchy hooks to lift them up. None of them, except Janis Ian’s “I’d Rather Be Me” (and maybe “World Burn”), were memorable.
In fact, the 2024 Mean girls apparently recognized this and graciously cut many songs from the soundtrack, including the mundane ‘Where Do You Belong?’, ‘Fearless’, ‘Whose House Is This?’ and ‘More Is Better’. But the other songs, although better, did not reach the heights of, for example, ‘Defying Gravity’. Consequently, viewers were left with only Tina Fey’s beloved original lines from the 2004 version to keep them entertained. And even those didn’t hit that well because they were simply crammed in as fan service.
That being said, we can at least be thankful that Renée Rapp is becoming a household name and that Avantika Vandanapu the internet’s newest It Girl. The rest of this cast is also nothing to sniff at. Even Lindsay Lohan could benefit from all this press – especially after Tina Fey shadowed her in the script.
Let’s hope that the next projects for these women do not cause mass strikes.
