Not to pull out my critics’ ‘burn book’ too early, but did we really need a musical revision of 2004’s celebrated teen comedy, Mean Girls? On the big screen, I mean?

Granted, the COVID-19 pandemic put the more innately justifiable Mean Girls stage musical on ice, following a popular two-year run on Broadway, so, maybe this is the next best thing? Either way, you can imagine that there was certainly some skepticism when it came to remaking Mean Girls’ original cinematic production as a movie musical, and no shortage of it came from yours truly. Love it or hate it, the original Mean Girls is a staple of millennial culture. It’s that ‘right place, right time’ classic that feels like a spiritual 2000’s-era successor to the timeless teen comedies of John Hughes, and simply tossing song numbers and TikTok into it would surely disturb that magic. After all, could you imagine a ‘hip’ and ‘modern’ musical remake of The Breakfast Club? Or Pretty in Pink? Yeah, I’m sure some poor, hubris-filled soul will try that someday, but it definitely wouldn’t fly yet!

Another red flag that immediately had me on my back foot with 2024’s new Mean Girls remake (and let’s not mince words, it is ultimately a remake!), is that this movie was originally planned to go straight to Paramount+. It was in the eleventh hour that Mean Girls 2024 was upgraded to a theatrical release, albeit in January, where it wouldn’t disturb any of 2024’s carefully placed blockbusters to come. Considering that most straight-to-streaming movies still struggle to match the prestige of their theatrical cousins (even within a duffer year for theatrical movies like 2023), Mean Girls’ scrapped straight-to-streaming plan didn’t feel like a promising sign. Sure, Blue Beetle managed to exceed expectations last year, as a positive example of a solid movie that was originally made for streaming, but wound up going to theatres in the end, though even then, Blue Beetle still faceplanted at the box office, ultimately making its theatrical upgrade pretty pointless.

Still, despite all of that initial cynicism from myself and certain other folks in critical and fan circles, I do have to eat crow in the end… Mean Girls 2024 is a lot of fun. Hell, in some respects, it’s even better than the original movie!

I know! Colour me shocked! With some legitimately fun musical numbers, a commendable commitment to fresh jokes and story tweaks, and a surprising effort to avoid the low-hanging fruit of conventional teen comedy vapidity (mostly), this new musical version of Mean Girls somehow manages to replicate the original movie’s appeal for a new generation. It’s almost like it somehow made ‘fetch’ happen!

One of the most immediately eyebrow-raising elements of Mean Girls 2024 is the fact that it takes more inspiration from the previous Broadway stage production than the original 2004 movie. Sure, the plot beats are all pretty much the same between the 2004 movie and the subsequent stage play, but with a clear emphasis on incorporating musical numbers into the narrative, Mean Girls 2024 tends to naturally favour the style of this story’s Broadway rendition.

A clever device within this musical remake’s storytelling as well is that it exclusively positions its musical moments as manifestations of its teen leads’ overblown emotions. There are even jokes made to reference this early on, such as protagonist, Cady Heron, played here by Angourie Rice, having her first musical sequence be interrupted almost immediately during the walk up to her new high school, or adults like Tina Fey’s returning Ms. Norbury (Fey once again wrote this 2024 remake’s script, on top of reprising her role from the original 2004 movie), appearing as if they’re about to sing during moments of heightened emotion, only to clear their throats and speak normally. This is not only a clever way to work the musical sequences organically into the narrative, but also a genuinely effective means to flex how far Fey’s written comedy has come since she first cut her teeth on the script for the original Mean Girls during the early 2000’s.

“One of the most immediately eyebrow-raising elements of Mean Girls 2024 is the fact that it takes more inspiration from the previous Broadway stage production than the original 2004 movie.”

In fact, Fey’s writing and freshly revitalized humour comes off so consistently strong during 2024’s Mean Girls that making this new remake a musical almost feels unnecessary. Almost. Depending on your perspective, this can be a strength or a weakness, since Mean Girls 2024 is so fun, well-written and well-performed during its ordinary dialogue scenes that it genuinely succeeds as a cinematic comedy on its own merits, though at the cost of its musical numbers not standing out as much within the production.

That is a bit of a flaw in Mean Girls 2024 that wasn’t totally ironed out; Its musical sequences lack those killer bops that will stick in your head indefinitely. Sure, there are still good songs and musical numbers in Mean Girls 2024, with Regina George-themed songs like, “Apex Predator” and, “World Burn” often presenting the most callously infectious energy and engagement in the moment, but the movie also doesn’t have that, “I Dreamed a Dream” or, “Let it Go”-level showstopper in the mix. This is also considering that the musical numbers featured in Mean Girls 2024 are a selection of highlights from the stage play, with several of the play’s musical numbers being predictably cut from the movie in order to keep its runtime and pacing reasonable.

Part of the issue with the musical numbers not consistently popping as much as they deserved to could also come down to Mean Girls 2024 being a co-production overseen by two first-time feature directors, Samantha Jayne and Arturo Perez, Jr. These two fledgling directors nonetheless manage to do enough to make the musical sequences fun and never tedious, plus they do seem to have a knack for comedic timing outside of the musical moments especially, though Fey’s standout script is definitely doing a lot of heavy lifting as well. The point being; It might be best to approach Mean Girls 2024 as a fan of the 2004 original first (or, at least good teen comedies), and a musical enthusiast second.

With the trappings of a musical fueling it, you might reasonably assume that Mean Girls 2024 is an extra flowery, exaggerated take on 2004’s classic teen comedy. You would be incorrect.

In perhaps an even more shocking left turn than the pitch of a movie musical, Mean Girls 2024 is, astonishingly, the more grounded version of this story. It’s almost downright wholesome at times, with a much more relatable feel than the more teen caricature flavour that permeated the 2004 original. Again, depending on your perspective, this can be a strength or a weakness. In my opinion, it’s a strength, since it allows the themes of Mean Girls 2024 to shine through, and its characters to feel more like people you would actually interact with in real life. Even subordinate ‘Plastics’, Karen Sheddy (formerly Karen Smith), played here by Avantika, and Gretchen Wieners, played here by Bebe Wood, are barely antagonists in Mean Girls 2024, ultimately functioning as believable, well-meaning human beings that simply ended up being swept into the irresistible orbit of ‘queen bee’, Regina George, played here by Renee Rapp, reprising her role as Regina from Mean Girls’ stage production.

Hell, terms like, “Plastics” and, “Queen Bee”, wielded proudly to describe key characters in the 2004 original, aren’t even really mentioned much, if at all in this 2024 remake of Mean Girls. The cliques of fictional North Shore High School are still given cartoonish (slightly altered) names in this musical remake, but the characters therein are often presented in a less morally pointed fashion. Even lead character, Cady’s supposed friends, Janis ‘Imi’ike (formerly Janis Ian), played here by Auli’i Cravalho, and Damian Hubbard, played here by Jaquel Spivey, sometimes come off as ‘meaner’ than the supposed ‘Plastics’, or, at the very least, Gretchen and Karen, who are more dramatic than truly ‘mean’ in most instances.

Where this can become a weakness however is when it diminishes some of the more memorable, hard-hitting ‘bite’ from the 2004 original. The original Mean Girls was less grounded, but it also committed more heavily to the ‘mean’ bit, that point being almost entirely shouldered by Rapp’s truly frightening Regina George in the 2024 remake. The original Regina George of the 2004 movie, played by Rachel McAdams, was still a menacing presence in her own right, but she was also shrill and manic, often hiding her underlying manipulations under a very thin layer of attractive, seemingly diplomatic gloss. Rapp’s Regina, by contrast, is played more like a commanding adolescent dictator, who builds her popularity through fear and coercion, commanding the devotion of an entire school through steely stares and hard-nosed popularity edicts.

On the flip side, Angourie Rice’s Cady is now given a much more believable journey as a well-meaning new kid that ends up falling from grace as a ‘Plastic’. Lindsay Lohan’s original Cady from the 2004 movie still had a sweet enough exterior to get by, but Lohan’s performance was definitely geared most heavily toward accentuating Cady’s mean streak. Rice’s performance however ends up going the opposite way, with her Cady being more credible as a homeschooled student that winds up in over her head, leaving her own manipulation and backstabbing to be mere opportunism, whereas Lohan’s version felt more like true malice to match Regina, at its worst. Much like Regina’s altered, but still valid characterization in the 2024 remake, Rice manages to make Cady her own, making her a more likable and relatable lead than Lohan ultimately did, though again, this could be viewed as a strength or a weakness, depending on your opinion of Lohan’s higher commitment to Cady’s worst traits.

Where Mean Girls 2024’s characters excel most is how they manage to bring home the themes of understanding, tolerance, and the dangers of basing your reputation and relationships around being mean and manipulative. I suppose, if you want to put a really fine point on it, Mean Girls 2024 is a slightly smarter movie than its 2004 predecessor, since its character portrayals and examination are ultimately deeper, which makes its resolution feel generally more satisfying. As a consequence however, the original Mean Girls from 2004 is also a bit more fun, mischievous and immediately gratifying. This likely means that its reputation as a millennial favourite won’t be threatened by this new 2024 remake, even if said remake still finds a lot of inspired ways to freshen up and remix its character dynamics, allowing it to present a more timely and complex look at teen psychology.

With almost twenty years having passed since the theatrical debut of the original Mean Girls, you might be wondering just how much the material might be updated with elements like social media and smartphones, neither of which existed in 2004. There are definitely a few scenes that are touched up to acknowledge this new 2024 reality for sure, with the iconic Christmas dance scene in particular being heavily modified, now that its entire audience can immediately pull out a smartphone and record the whole fiasco. More widespread social awareness also factors into this scene to boot, since it’s more openly acknowledged as a, “Recurring nightmare” for students and staff, rather than a borderline creepy sexual worship of characters that are supposed to be teenagers. That’s nice and all, though it does smack a bit of hypocrisy when Mean Girls 2024 actually spends more time openly sexualizing the Plastics compared to the 2004 original, particularly during several racier musical numbers. If that’s your vibe, Mean Girls, then fill your boots, but don’t pretend you’re above the original’s most famous moment of sexual worship, yeah?

“Angourie Rice’s Cady is now given a much more believable journey as a well-meaning new kid that ends up falling from grace as a ‘Plastic’.”

On a more serious note though, I found it genuinely surprising, sometimes in a good way, that Mean Girls 2024 resisted the urge to line itself with Gen-Z hallmarks like TikTok culture. There are definitely still several nods to the world’s most increasingly infamous media platform in Mean Girls 2024, particularly when the war between Cady and Regina escalates, but outside of one or two exceptions, Mean Girls 2024 doesn’t actually base itself too heavily around things like the TikTok phenomenon during its musical numbers especially, where it would have been particularly easy to do. While there are some missed opportunities when it comes to exploring the new and underhanded ways that girls can bully each other in the Gen-Z era, it does help Mean Girls 2024 sacrifice some timeliness for a chance to be relatively timeless, in a way that legitimately manages to rival its 2004 original. That’s definitely a mark of pride for a movie that could have very easily pandered hard to modern teenagers throughout.

A major reason why Mean Girls has endured as a cinematic staple of teen comedies is the fact that it was arguably the first movie to effectively shine a spotlight on female bullying, a concept that cinema had acknowledged in passing, but never adequately explored beforehand. Mean Girls’ musical remake can’t rely on that same sense of novelty, since we’ve now had twenty years of subsequent comedies about women behaving badly, many of which blatantly take inspiration from the original Mean Girls. This includes surprise hits like The DUFF and Blockers, female-fronted comedies with adult leads like Bridesmaids and Bad Moms, and even more recent female-fronted comedy gems like Joy Ride and Bottoms. These movies all owe a debt to Mean Girls, and that makes for some pretty big shoes to fill.

Surprisingly though, Mean Girls 2024 doesn’t coast on its musical gimmick. Instead, it manages to defy the odds as a solid revitalization of this classic story for a new generation, with the musical numbers serving as adequate icing atop another strong take on this teen comedy. The more multi-layered character examination does sacrifice some of the 2004 original’s lovably caustic edge, though this also allows Mean Girls’ 2024 remake to stand as a complement to its 2004 inspiration, rather than a true replacement. For fans, that’s definitely the best of both worlds, enabling these two renditions of Mean Girls to stand stronger together, even if this 2024 remake is nonetheless a better comedy than it is a musical.