Even if you鈥檝e never seen Tina Fey鈥檚 2004 teen comedy “Mean Girls,” you鈥檙e familiar with it in some way.听
Some of the film’s most memorable quotes 鈥 鈥淪top trying to make fetch happen鈥; 鈥淚鈥檓 not like a regular mom, I鈥檓 a cool mom鈥; 鈥淥n Wednesdays, we wear pink鈥澨 adorn everything from candles to coffee mugs (Etsy Canada boasts more than 13,000 “Mean Girls” themed products) to say nothing of the thousands of memes it continues to inspire.
How does a landline-era comedy about teen girls, a notably fickle demographic, remain an enduring source of intrigue more than 20 years later?
The answer: “Mean Girls,” a new movie version of which opened on Friday, is timeless: it’s a classic outsider story.
When Cady Heron (Lindsay Lohan in the original), who spent her pre-teendom with her zoologist parents in Africa, is dropped into a suburban Chicago high school (海角社区官网standing in handsomely), she initially flails.听
She鈥檚 mystified by teachers who don’t trust her and confused by social groupings, until kind, oddball classmates Janis (current prestige-TV fixture Lizzy Caplan) and Damian (Daniel Franzese) decide to be her tour guides.
Before long, the “regulation hottie,” as Janis calls her with a good-natured eye roll, gains听admission into the school鈥檚 popular clique, a notorious trio of miniskirted, glossy-haired, yes, mean girls called the Plastics.
Hanging out with them, Cady says, 鈥(is) like leaving the actual world and entering girl world鈥 and, once she鈥檚 in, her innocence initially works in her favour: she doesn鈥檛 know she鈥檚 supposed to hate her body, or that something as simple as a phone call can be weaponized. But she also quickly becomes seduced by girl world, which seems to have a clear set of rules to follow for people to praise you, admire you, even fear you. The price she ultimately pays is to betray those closest to her, first by accident and later more ruthlessly.
In her script, Fey lays bare the sinister semblance of the Plastics鈥 politeness: they鈥檙e sweet to your face but cut you down behind your back. If you dare to disagree, or try to rise above your station, you鈥檒l quickly be slapped back into place.
Cady is an appealing heroine who gets the guy, but it’s head Plastic Regina 鈥 the centre of Cady鈥檚 emotional education 鈥 whose听barbs you remember once the credits roll. As played by听Ontario-born A-lister Rachel McAdams,听Regina is a girl so popular her every move inspires a trend and whose pearly smile belies her savage alpha nature. And it’s Regina, played by rising star Renee虂 Rapp, who is front and centre in the 2024 film.
So-called girl culture, which returns to trend cycles regularly, seems to be on the upswing again: at present, girl math and girl dinner 鈥 to say nothing of fashion鈥檚 current obsession with ribbons and bows 鈥 are among the most feverishly TikTokked topics.
Glamour rules the day in Greta Gerwig鈥檚 billion-dollar “Barbie” (2023), another lost-girl story. In Gerwig鈥檚 version of girl world, a self-sustaining utopia powered by blank smiles and endless dance parties, every girl is a nice girl and being plastic is fantastic 鈥 until it鈥檚 not. Lead Barbie (Margot Robbie) has to leave her hot pink comfort zone before she can learn some hard lessons and begin to become a whole person, something not unlike a teen girl鈥檚 journey to self-discovery.
Gerwig has said her movie is partially based on听Mary Pipher鈥檚 seminal 1994 non-fiction book “Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls” (1994), which focuses on the societal pressures young girls face while growing up.
Fey鈥檚 “Mean Girls” screenplay was jump-started in a similar fashion: after reading Rosalind Wiseman鈥檚 “Queen Bees and Wannabes” (2002) 鈥 a deep dive into why teenage girls tend to form cliques 鈥 Fey was inspired to write her fictional take.听
What Fey has been able to capture so uniquely is that girldom is ultimately a tragicomedy. Everything feels deeply dramatic at the time but looks a lot funnier in hindsight: the stakes, ultimately, are so low. Since Fey’s Plastics first graced the big screen, glaringly few films have caught onto that fact and laid it out as sharply or as cleanly.
Two standouts: “Easy A” (2010), in which Emma Stone plays an average high schooler who decides to help the less popular by pretending to have sex with them for gift cards (yes, really), and “The DUFF” (2015), in which a proud weirdo played by Mae Whitman struggles with the realities of being BFF with two popular hot girls.听
A more recent entry in the teen-girl film canon, 2023鈥檚 “Are You There God? it鈥檚 Me, Margaret,” based on the Judy Blume book, features a familiar face: Regina George herself, Rachel McAdams, shopping for wicker furniture and joining the PTA as Margaret鈥檚 mother, Barbara.
McAdams, who is receiving Oscar buzz for the role, plays the mother with the appealing softness of her old onscreen nemesis, Cady Heron. Less like a regular mom, more like a cool mom? Call it a mean-girl evolution. And so fetch.
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