Mean Girls

There are flashes of wit here, and a decent sound-track but for the most part it's a complete non-story. "Cady" (Angourie Rice) arrives as the newbie at the North Shore High School where she is shunned by all but the gay/rebellious combo that is "Damian" (Jaquel Spivey) and "Janis" (Auli'i Caravalho). For a bit of mischief, they decide that "Cady" should infiltrate the trio known as the "Plastics" - dominated by "Regina" (Reneé Rapp) whose leather clad frame has the whole school under her spell. She manages to ingratiate herself with this group of pretty vacuous airheads and report back to her "real" friends each day as the story gets thinner and thinner until it's needs the mother of all toupés. It's about bitchiness, friendship, duplicity, shallowness and then there's the floppy-haired eye candy "Aaron" (Christopher Briney) whom she and "Regina" squabble over - whilst he has all the loyalty of a goldfish; but none of it is really very original or funny. Writer Tina Fey appears as the calculus teacher but fails to impact much as the thing just meanders along ticking every box and beating just about every stereotype to death before the anthesis of all things obnoxious - a spring "prom" - brings things to an inevitable conclusion. Rapp can sing, and she knows how to take this stage-suited concept and belt out a song or two, but the rest of this really does remind me of one of the latter editions of the tired "Glee" project. I get I'm not the demographic, but I struggled to see the point of this.

Too similar to the original, though the musical moments do help alleviate that. I didn't necessarily like any of the songs performed in 2024's <em>'Mean Girls'</em>, but none of them grated on me - which is always a plus when it comes to musicals. I could've done with a slightly shorter run time, though the humour is decent - if a bit hit-and-miss. Angourie Rice is a bit meh in the lead role, certainly a downgrade on Lindsay Lohan. I guess most of the cast are inferior comparatively, but I did enjoy the performances of Reneé Rapp and Jaquel Spivey... Auliʻi Cravalho too. Good to see Tina Fey and Tim Meadows back again, whilst there's a great cameo at one point. All things considered, it's fine. Can't wait for the 2044 remake.