So I've been out of high school for more than twenty-five years at this point, and sometimes I will watch a teen movie or show and think, "Were kids in high school that mean? I don't remember them being that mean." Then this person or that will come up in conversation and I will find myself saying, "No one was nice to them. I know I definitely wasn't," or I'll think back to a time when a bunch of us got really carried away talking about someone behind their back and I'll realize, "I didn't even dislike that person. I just let myself get caught up in it." So the point is, no, high school kids are maybe not as overtly mean as they are on something like Glee or Cobra Kai, but I think the social dynamics are such that it sometimes seems better to join in, even on mean behavior, rather than be the one on the outside.
In Mean Girls, both the original 2004 version and the 2024 musical version, newcomer Cady Herron, who has been homeschooled and lived in Kenya prior to the beginning of the movie, learns that it's not only nearly impossible to stay above or outside of the high school social hierarchy, but that it's pretty fun to be at the top-- but that getting there isn't pretty, and your position there is always tenuous. Almost immediately after starting at her first American high school, she catches the attention of both the outsiders, Janis and Damien, and the Plastics, the "cool girl" clique, led by the beautiful, rich, and mean Regina George. At first, she doesn't see what's so bad about the Plastics, but then when she catches Regina kissing Aaron Samuels, her crush and Regina's ex, she agrees to Janis's plan to get revenge on Regina, who also wronged Janis in middle school. Though she succeeds, she loses sight of who she is and hurts a lot of people in the process.
The original Mean Girls was iconic, with Lindsay Lohan, Rachel McAdams, Lacey Chabert, Amanda Seyfried, and Lizzy Caplan turning in memorable performances as Cady, Regina, Plastics Gretchen and Karen, and Janis, respectively. Though they were a tough act to follow, it wasn't long into the movie that I thought to myself, "This actually makes a lot of sense as a musical." The original movie had some funny, over the top elements that the musical format gets to play up, and the songs let you see into the heads of not only the main characters of Cady, Regina, and Janis, but secondary characters such as Gretchen and Karen. Karen (played here by Avantika) gets a hilarious song about how fun it is to dress sexy on Halloween. This version also incorporates contemporary social media effectively; the way teens communicate is different now than it was in 2004, so it's neat that they work that in. The only real problem I see with this version is that while the actors playing Regina and Janis (Renee Rapp and Auli'i Cravalho) are GREAT, Cady (Angourie Rice) is just GOOD, meaning Regina and Janis really steal the show. I'm not sure if that's even a problem; I just found myself thinking that I would have liked to see 2004 Linday Lohan in a musical version, since we know she can sing and did a great job with the character. Regardless...it's fun. If you like musicals, go see it.
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