This song cut from the 2024 Mean Girls movie could’ve saved Cady’s arc

16.01.2024 - 19:31 / polygon.com / Lindsay Lohan

Like many theatrical adaptations of stage musicals, Mean Girls(2024) doesn’t include all the songs from the Broadway version. After all, the musical has a two-and-a-half-hour run time, which wouldn’t translate well into a breezy, snappy film. Directors Samantha Jayne and Arturo Perez Jr. had to make some cuts.

Some of the movie’s trims work out. Many of the cut songs are reprises, or numbers that heavily feature protagonist Cady Heron — but Angourie Rice, who plays Cady in the 2024 movie, doesn’t have the voice for those songs. (Case in point: Jaquel Spivey as Damian takes over her soaring, belt-heavy part in “Apex Predator.”) Some of the more fun songs have been cut down — like “Meet the Plastics.” In the movie, it’s just an intro for head mean girl Regina George (Reneé Rapp). But the original version features a unique intro for each member of her clique, which helps solidify their distinct, hilarious personalities. Few of those parings have any real impact on the plot, though.

Except for one critical moment.

In the Broadway musical, Damian leads a song called “Stop,” where he calls Cady out for turning into Regina. He’s trying to get Cady to pump the brakes on the mega-bitch personality she’s started to take on, as her project to infiltrate the Plastics by pretending to become one of them stops being pretend. It’s a fun song for Damian (and seeing Spivey take on the tap dancing would’ve been a great moment in the movie), but it also provides some key context for Cady’s character development.

The new Mean Girls doesn’t really do enough to hammer home Cady’s heel-turn into the new Regina. That’s a key part of the original movie, where Lindsay Lohan’s voice-over helps sell Cady’s increasing obsession with Regina and taking up her lifestyle. In Mean Girls (2024), the change is startlingly abrupt. Immediately following Regina’s very public fall (physical and metaphorical) at the winter talent show, Cady becomes the center of attention on social media. The next scene has her primping in class, ignoring her friends in homeroom, and lying about weekend plans to her mom.

Technically, her alteration happens after winter break, and she’s had some off-screen time to adapt to her new status. But this selfish, status-obsessed version of Cady feels like a huge leap when her previous song was mostly her being wide-eyed, timid, and pushed around by everyone else. In the musical, there are three whole songs and an intermission before she becomes the new Regina, so the passage of time is clearer. Rice’s Cady doesn’t get a slow escalation, or a clear time break. She suddenly goes from doe-eyed ingénue who can barely stomach the idea of revenge into someone fake crying in front of her mom so she can get out of a