Tina Fey’s new movie-musical version of Mean Girls has a critical charisma gap

11.01.2024 - 19:21 / polygon.com / Lindsay Lohan

The phenomenon of a non-musical movie being adapted into a stage musical that then gets adapted into a movie is surprisingly common, as recent films like 2023’s The Color Purple and the 2022 Matilda demonstrate. Some of those adapted movie musicals have even eclipsed the original movie versions in pop culture legacy, like Hairspray and Little Shop of Horrors.

The 2024 Mean Girls is the latest entry in this very specific genre. It’s adapted from the 2018 Broadway musical, itself adapted from the 2004 film starring Lindsay Lohan and Rachel McAdams. The newMean Girls probably bears more of a burden than past movie musicals adapted from musicals adapted from movies, in that the original movie left a huge impact on pop culture, and came out right at the dawn of the internet age, which set it up for a specific sort of cultural longevity.

Directors Samantha Jayne and Arturo Perez Jr., making their feature-film debut, have their work cut out for them, even armed with a script from Tina Fey, who returns after penning both the musical and the 2004 movie. They make some baffling choices, like keeping some of Nell Benjamin and Jeff Richmond’s songs from the Broadway show that don’t really highlight the cast’s vocals, at the expense of cutting some more fun and dynamic ones.

But they also do a pretty neat job of updating the minutiae of high school drama for the social media age. Bolstered by a (mostly) stellar cast, who make the iconic characters their own and show off their spectacular singing voices, Mean Girls is a fun little update, though it never transcends the experience of the original movie.

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

Like the first movie,2024’s Mean Girls follows Cady Heron (Angourie Rice), a bright-eyed, bushy-tailed teenage girl who transfers to North Shore High School for her junior year after a lifetime of being homeschooled in Africa. She struggles to fit in, until artsy Janis (Auliʻi Cravalho) and Damian (Jaquel Spivey) take her under their wings. Unexpectedly, the school’s most popular and ruthless student, Regina George (Reneé Rapp), decides to invite Cady to sit with her and her loyal lackeys, the Plastics: dim-witted, pretty Karen (Avantika) and insecure secret-keeper Gretchen (Bebe Wood).

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

The cast of Mean Girls (2024) has a lot of big shoes to fill, both from the original movie and from the Broadway musical. Most of them do step up,