Mean Girls
“Mean Girls takes a benign but superficial approach to diversity.”
Title: Mean Girls (2024)
Directors: Samantha Jayne 👩🏼🇺🇸 and Arturo Perez Jr. 👨🏽🇲🇽🇨🇦
Writer: Tina Fey 👩🏼🇺🇸
Reviewed by Li 👩🏻🇺🇸
Technical: 3/5
Glossy, pink, and picture-perfect, the new Mean Girls musical, adapted from the 2017 stage musical (which itself was based on the 2004 film), delivers the goods. Everything old is new again! Writer Tina Fey revives witty dialogue from the original, which she co-wrote, while new directors Samantha Jayne and Arturo Perez Jr. bring to life comedic bangers like “Sexy” and “Meet the Plastics.” But if you’ve seen the original movie, there’s no getting away from a strong sense of déjà vu.
Perhaps this remake will introduce its iconic lines to a whole new generation. (“She doesn’t even go here!”) But for the already initiated, this movie feels like reheated leftovers. It’s enjoyable and funny, with some necessary updates—much of the bullying takes place on people’s phones now, for example. And despite a forgettable protagonist, titular “mean girl” Regina George is played to perfection by Reneé Rapp, who reprises her role from the stage. But in the end, this latest iteration fails to stand on its own. Every story beat and punchline can be seen coming from miles away, so they just don’t hit as hard.
Gender: 4.25/5
Does it pass the Bechdel Test? YES
With Fey and Jayne as filmmakers, and a majority-female cast, Mean Girls easily centers women. Characters hold a variety of relationships with one another, from cutthroat opponents to frenemies to family members, friends, and love interests. And girls like main character Cady (Angourie Rice) and her new friend Janis (Auli'i Cravalho) demonstrate growth over the course of the musical.
On the one hand, the writing does lean into what you’d expect from the title, reflecting traditional narratives around how women are manipulative and catty, willing to stab each other in the backs for boys and/or popularity. But thanks to a plethora of other female-led high school comedies that flourish today, like Bottoms (2023), Booksmart (2019), and Blockers (2018), the onus isn’t on any one lighthearted movie to portray girls in non-stereotypical ways. The more the merrier, when it comes to representation.
Race: 3.5/5
With so many aughts-era comedies made by White filmmakers and led by majority-White casts, 2024’s Mean Girls slightly improves on this uniformity. Behind the lens, Perez Jr. brings a Mexican Canadian perspective, while onscreen, supporting characters include Janis (played by multiracial Native Hawaiian actor Cravalho), Damian (Black American actor Jaquel Spivey), and popular girl Karen (Indian American actor Avantika).
But three of the movie’s four popular girls are White, leaving Karen feeling tokenized. Among them, Gretchen (Bebe Wood) mentions an abuelita—a positive, but very understated nod to Wood’s Cuban American heritage—and the stray comment quickly dissipates, never connecting to more about Gretchen’s character. The Mathletes team that Cady eventually joins are made up of South and East Asian nerds, even if the movie does portray them as confident, rather than awkward. Ultimately, the film avoids discussions of race or ethnicity, making Mean Girls benign but superficial in its approach to diversity.
Bonus for LGBTQ: +0.50
The main storyline revolves around straight characters Cady and Regina, who compete for a boy’s (Christopher Briney) attention. Queer characters have supporting roles, even though Damian very much falls into the “sassy gay friend” trope. But it does help that he isn’t only cheering on Cady—he’s even more invested in his best friend Janis, who’s a lesbian. And Damian also gets a small nod at romance, implied by the smile another boy gives him during a school dance.
As for Janis, in the 2004 film she was rumored to be gay (and bullied for it), but her sexuality was never confirmed. The updated musical closes that loop, giving Janis a brief romance as she brings a girl as her date to Homecoming. Janis is also cast with Cravalho, who’s out and bisexual. Overall, the movie demonstrates a queer-friendly setting, with plenty of same-sex couples shown throughout the high school campus and in dance numbers.
Bonus for Body Diversity: +0.50
There’s a bit of body diversity among the cast. It’s positive to see the drop-dead gorgeous Rapp, who’s bigger than Hollywood’s usual stick-thin archetype, portrayed as the school’s top queen bee, lusted after by all. It’s especially powerful after learning that Rapp had to fight a toxic work environment during her time on Broadway, which exacerbated her eating disorder. One can only hope that the set of Mean Girls offered her a safer environment.
Regina isn’t the only character who falls outside society’s unrealistic expectations around body size: Cady’s friends Janis and Damian do too, with Spivey saying how glad he is “to get to tell a story of a fat, Black, queer person who is happy about the world around him and loves himself unconditionally and walks through the world with his head held high.”
Mediaversity Grade: B 3.92/5
Mean Girls takes advantage of its stellar 2004 material, with old lines of dialogue that still land today. (Poor Gretchen still can’t make "fetch" happen.) Throw in a few catchy numbers, and you get an adequate addition to the small-but-growing group of female-led high school movies, written and directed by women.
Like Mean Girls? Try these other female-led high school comedies.
Bottoms (2023)
Booksmart (2019)
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