Mean Girls 2024's One Big Problem

The new 2024 Mean Girls musical has finally arrived on the big screen! So, does this film adaptation of the Broadway musical of the classic early 2000s film really work? Today we're analyzing what they kept the same, what they updated for the better, and the one big change that doesn't really work. Plus we'll unpack why they tried so hard to hide the fact that this film is in fact a musical in all of the promo leading up to the release. Here's our take!

CHAPTERS
00:00 A new Mean Girls 20 years later
00:21 What the new Mean Girls got right!
03:32 The biggest thing missing from the new movie
04:38 New vs Original Cady, Janis, and Regina
09:07 Why did they make it a musical?
11:12 So... should you see it?

CREDITS
Executive Producers: Debra Minoff & Susannah McCullough
Chief Creative Director: Susannah McCullough
Associate Producer: Jessica Babineaux
Writer: Jessica Babineaux
Narrator: Jessica Babineaux
Video Editor: Daniel Wolff

[theluckienurse]

Weird that they made Janis not a mean girl… Janis is arguably one of the meanest (if not the meanest) girls in the film. But it’s so insidious that the viewer doesn’t catch on until toward the end of the film or after watching the film a second time.

[_politefrog_]

The new movie did remove the racism, homophobia, and pedophilic relationships, but I think including those things shows how truly fucked up high school is. These things are uncomfortable because they are a horrible reality. What I loved about the original is how much it had in common with my actual high school experience filled with mean mean people and that teachers can be predators.

[katrinawilliams]

The original didn’t just become a cult classic because it had funny jokes, talented performers, and quotable lines, it was also real. The cruelty and vindictiveness felt authentic to the average teenage experience. Basing it on Queen Bees and Wannabes, an actual book on female adolescent social psychology, is what helped it land for so many. I think in their hunt to avoid anything that could offend anyone they lost the best part of the movie: how well in captures just how offensive and MEAN high school girls are to one another

[derred]

I'm a person of color. I never really viewed the original identification of race or ethnic based social groups in a school racists. In fact when i went to high school those literally existed. And the meaness did exist. There in fact were teachers in the news that had affairs with students. I'm sure it still happens.

[thegiftofgabby]

Let me just say that simply mentioning one’s race is not “racist….” 😑 ‘Unfriendly black hottie’ will forever and always be an aspirational term 💁🏽‍♀️

[conormitchell]

This kind of reminds me why the new Gossip Girl didn't work. The people writing for Gen Z (in this instance a Gen X'er) don't understand how they're mean or if they even have the capacity for meanness - outside of what they've experienced, mostly in the form of "cancelling someone".

[mbanerjee]

Is it just me or is the fashion in the new movie well...ugly? Every outfit from the original has a sophisticated but feminine quality whereas the new looks seem very costumey.

[serahne]

Honestly a lot of the listed 'positive' is what leads to the remake being toothless. Trying to be too PC doesn't work with Mean Girls. Getting rid of the teacher preying on college students, of the racial and homophobic prejudices... I mean, yes, it's good, but this is not reality (?). It shouldn't have been taken out of the movie, just handled differently. These things still happen nowadays, pretending they don't is stupid.

[intelligent_kiddo]

One of the listed positives was skipping the health teacher predating on young girls - but why? This is still a real problem, and should have been called out as it was in the original, where the teacher in question was charged in the end if i remember correctly

[dogtired]

Not making the kids mean enough contradicts the literal goal of the movie. It's sad they were too scared to push it because Fey is funniest when she's cruel (all of 30 Rock).

[ajstudios]

I think Janis being rumored to be queer but turning out to be straight was a good thing that was in the original movie. It taught how it wasn't good to make assumptions about people and their sexuality. I feel like modern writers missed the point.

[mbanerjee]

What made the original funny was that wasn't so politically correct. It wasn't aspirational, but it was real.

[ionthegravity]

The lunch table scene wasnt about Tina Fey being racist. It was a reference to Rosalind Wiseman's book (and basis of the movie) "Queen bees and Wannabes". In the book, she went to middle schools and high schools across America to speak to young girls about their social circles. One of the projects she asked the girls to do was to make a map of the hallways and lunchrooms based on cliques.

The "Unfriendly Black Hotties", "Cool Asian Nerds", etc., came from what the girls themselves drew on those maps. READ THE SOURCE MATERIAL PEOPLE!!! 🤣

[youtubewontletmetypeagoodu]

I’m glad someone made a video abt this. Reginas just rude without any of the charm that makes her popularity believable. Gretchen, Karen, Janis, and even cady have a lot of their mean /popular girl moments removed. They spend the whole movie looking, sad and being insulted and never actually do anything mean. Even little things like Karen saying Gretchen is annoying and Gretchen saying she can’t help it that she’s popular are gone.

[claracatlady]

I think softening is a general problem of modern films and modern villains. You can be not racist, or homophobic or sexist and still *be mean*

Or heck let the mean bad people be all of those things, after all they are mean and bad. Just don’t try to make ex. Sexist jokes and pass it off like “haha this is super funny, and normal and ok to say and this is a character you are supposed to like. Nothing wrong with this”

[RebeccasPetCare]

The original is still by far the best.

[isaacrichter]

The thing is, the original Mean Girls became the sensation it became because it was, in many ways, ahead of its time. While conversations around internalized misogyny were already happening in 2004, they weren't as mainstream back then as they are now, so Mean Girls became something of a gift for teenage girls growing up around that time to re-examine their place in the High School pecking order (I was in High School when it came out and I had these conversations with some of my female friends)... plus, it was a lot of people's introduction to Tina Fey and her style of writing (this was before 30 Rock, so unless you watched SNL regularly, you may have not been familiar with Tina Fey)... This new version, outside of being a musical and updating it to current technology and sensibilities, isn't really doing ahything new with what its deeper themes, and is even doing what too much of media these days tries to do to its detriment: make everything aspirational, and therefore have less bite. Plus, I don't really think the musical is all that good (I think Heathers was a much better mean-girl-film-to-musical adaptation, though even that one is kind of hampered by a too-sappy ending)...

[dizkidliz]

I guess the marketing department was aware that theatre fans will recognize Renee Rapp since she was a replacement for Regina George in the Broadway production, but that knowledge is considered to be a bit niche to a lot of people.

[myliza]

I actually liked that Janice wasn’t actually queer in the original. Not bc it wasn’t ok if she was. But bc it highlighted what “ tomboys” deal with. Just bc she isn’t girly doesn’t mean she’s gay. Making her gay breaks that.

[nilotinner]

I know it's going to sound bad for me to say that I don't like that Janis is a lesbian in the musical, but please listen, there's a joke in the movie where Regina actually misunderstood the word Lebanese and when she asked Janis what she was, she heard lesbian instead of Lebanese. And in my opinion it was a great joke in the movie apart from that the bullying towards Janis feel different because everything is based on something that isn't even true.