Reneé Rapp in Mean Girls (2024) | IMDb
There’s been major drama happening this past week. No, we’re not talking about those Oscar snubs. We’re talking about all those Mean Girls walkouts that flooded social media after the movie’s January 12 premiere.
If you were on TikTok last week, then you definately might need even seen a well-liked video showing audiences audibly groaning on the movie’s overuse of music. It’s since been removed for copyright reasons, but the actual fact stays that many Mean Girls fans weren’t completely happy with this contemporary update on the 2004 classic.
Of course, a part of that disappointment was attributable to Paramount Pictures’ marketing of the film, which promised an easy remake and nothing else. In reality, the movie was a remake of the Mean Girls musical that hit Broadway in 2017. That meant that lines like “Is butter a carb” were suddenly replaced with limitless songs written by Tina Fey’s husband, Jeff Richmond, and Nell Benjamin. And the unique musical was not exactly Hamilton.
But viewers might be forgiven for not knowing Mean Girls was a musical. After all, similar stories have played out for The Color Purple and Wonka, each of which benefited from trailers obfuscating their musicality. In this case, nevertheless, Mean Girls’ real problem was that it was pretty mid.
Just like she did with the unique Mean Girls, screenwriter Tina Fey lent a sly wit to this latest iteration. But it rarely emerged – buried, because it was, under layers of up to date updates. Some of those were needed: Characters could now use social media, for example. They also referenced veganism and gender-neutral toilets as an alternative of slut-shaming one another (see: “Boo, you whore,” which was rightfully missing). Coach Carr’s sex-ed lecture was more attuned to 2024 sensibilities. And there have been no landlines.
But Fey’s latest screenplay refused to make the changes that fans actually desired to see, a.k.a. making Regina George a closeted lesbian. Instead, Reneé Rapp was left to fill within the blanks and play the character as queer in her own mind. On top of this, the screenplay overlooked classic lines like “It’s like I even have ESPN or something” in lieu of latest jokes that always felt shoehorned in. (Also missing: The beloved “Oh my god, Danny DeVito, I really like your work.”)
Even the style updates weren’t working. Though generally paying homage to current Gen Z fashions, the film did not create anything as immediately iconic as Regina’s pink cardigan lewk from the unique flick. As Paper Magazine was capable of discern from this film’s trailer alone, this latest Mean Girls skipped creative contemporary costuming in favor of superficial 2020 updates.
Thus, when all was sung and done, the film amounted to precisely what it advertised: A mere remake of the wittier 2004 Mean Girls. Yes, the songs were there, but they didn’t add much. (More on that later.) This placed an unfair burden on the remake’s forged. That’s to not shade Reneé Rapp, who had rizz to spare and ate in every scene. But it’s to say that hilarious performers like Busy Philipps needed to work hard to flee their predecessors’ shadow. And considering that this “latest” version had the identical plot, characters, and dialogue as the unique, it practically begged viewers to check these actors to their 2004 counterparts. Obviously, nothing can compare to Amy Poehler declaring herself a “cool mom,” sorry.
To her credit, Tina Fey did attempt to make this cinematic money grab into something fresh. “It’s tricky because jokes need to be surprises to work,” she told Entertainment Weekly. “There’s just a little nostalgic dopamine that we get, but I learned doing the musical that in case you want it to play as a joke, it’s not going to play the identical if it’s just the identical. So finding real latest moments after which finding spots to subvert what you expect the old line to be was really helpful.”
But Fey still left in many aged jokes to maintain fans completely happy, which created an uphill battle in her quest to make a “latest” Mean Girls. And then there have been those very meh songs. Those were actively working against anything Fey could do.
When Mean Girls hit Broadway in 2017, it received very middling reviews – mostly due to its music. Songs like Gretchen Wieners’ “What’s Wrong With Me” barely scraped the surface of those characters’ psyches, serving more as musical bookends than insightful showstoppers. Instead, they stated the plain in an earnest, often straight-faced way – and with none catchy hooks to lift them up. None of them, save for Janis Ian’s “I’d Rather Be Me” (and perhaps “World Burn”), were memorable.
In fact, the 2024 Mean Girls apparently recognized this and graciously cut many songs from its soundtrack, including the run-of-the-mill “Where Do You Belong?,“ “Fearless,“ “Whose House Is This?,” and “More Is Better.” But the remaining songs, although higher, didn’t reach the heights of, say, “Defying Gravity.” Consequently, viewers were only left with Tina Fey’s beloved original lines from the 2004 version to maintain them entertained. And even those didn’t hit as well, since they were crammed in simply as fan service.
All that being said, we will a minimum of be grateful that Renée Rapp is becoming a household name and that Avantika Vandanapu is the Internet’s newest It Girl. The remainder of this forged is nothing to smell at, either. Even Lindsay Lohan might profit from all this press – especially after Tina Fey shaded her within the script.
Let’s just hope that the following projects for these women don’t induce mass walkouts.
