Let's talk about Mean Girls
Ok, look. Admittedly I have trauma regarding the original Mean Girls movie. I was in high school in the early 2000s as this movie came out, so I was forced to watch that movie so many times I grew to despise it. I thought every character was a terrible person (and still do), and my high school experience was so far removed from that movie I couldn't even begin to relate.
Fast-forward to about a year or two ago when I first experienced the music from Mean Girls the Musical. While nothing earth shattering, it is admittedly WAY better than one would expect from Mean Girls the Musical. I am particularly fond of "I See Stars," "I'd Rather Be Me," and "Fearless."
Now I have to admit, I have not seen the musical. I had tickets to go see it, but when the day came, I was too disincentivized to actually see it because of my hate for the movie. I have seen some clips on YouTube, but that's it.
So when they made Mean Girls the Musical the Movie (lol), I checked it out from my local library (Go libraries!!! They have all sorts of cool shits like DVDs of movies you kind of want to see, but refuse to spend any money on. Support you local libraries!!). Here are some of my thoughts.
It's cool they got the Broadway Regina to reprise her role. I wish more of the stars were from the Broadway cast, particularly Barrett Wilbert Weed (ugh her voice is so good.) Auliʻi Cravalho is a pretty good replacement though. All the singers are great. The acting's pretty decent too.
2. Lol, those are supposed to be High Schoolers??????
(The Part where I rant about songs since it is a musical after all)
3. First, I really miss Fearless. I think you lose a lot of Gretchen's character when you lose that song. You also lose a lot of the message of being, well, Fearless, and not being afraid to be yourself.
4. The loss of the song "More is Always Better." I do think this is another loss of character this time for Cady and Aaron. It's one of the turning points for her and well, frankly gives Aaron any character at all besides being an object of desire who is apparently decent at math. Finally, it gives us the set-up for "I See Stars." That song makes way less sense without this one. (Cut "Sexy" instead if you need to cut a song since that one has absolutely no plot or character relevance. So Karen is dumb and hot. We knew that. But no, we'd rather have hot 20 somethings skimpily clad dancing sexily than deeper character development 🙄)
5. The adaptation of "I'd Rather be Me." Oof. This song is the very first one I heard on the Broadway soundtrack, and is basically the main reason I looked in to the show at all. It's a REAL banger, and Barrett Wilbert Weed KILLS it. This is basically my life motto and I can listen to this song on repeat for a long time. It's a power song about the power of just being yourself and not being afraid of what others think of you. And the movie does it.... weird? Look, I get that it's a movie and you can't just have the character stand there and sing to the camera, but this is a song by Janis to the girls of the high school. And by the end, they are singing with her, agreeing with her message. But here, she's only with the girls for the first verse. Then she's just running around singing to the camera while barging through random classrooms for no reason. And in the movie, she's singing it to be petty and bitchy, rather than the self-confidence of "I don't need you and I won't stoop to your level, and I am perfectly ok with just being myself, no matter what." I highly recommend you check out this video. It's a much better portrayal of this song.
6. Ok, "I See Stars." Like, "I'd Rather Be Me," it starts off great with Cady using it to apologize to her classmates and tell them how beautiful they all are. But then she... stops? Just stops singing the song and some rando takes over singing it in the background???? That song is like the core message of your story. It's about how EVERYONE is a beautiful and unique. And it culminates with the whole school joining in for a powerful moment of acceptance of both yourself and others around you. Instead, you get some lame dialog and Janis and Damian shoe-horning in the message of "Be Nice" at the end. Just let them sing the song!!! It does such a better job of conveying the message without beating you condescendingly over the head with it.
7. (Ok, it was fun that they got Tina Fey and Tim Meadows back. Also a Lindsay Lohan cameo. Nice homage to the original).
I get why a lot of the changes were made. It's hard to adapt a Broadway production into film and I'm sure a lot of these things were cut for time. I know I have trauma surrounding this story, but honestly I would say skip it and just go check out the soundtrack of the Broadway version instead. There's basically nothing new added to the story with this adaptation and while I appreciate the ability to check out some version of the musical without a show needing to be playing in my city and needing to buy tickets, but honestly, I didn't have that good of time. I was playing on my phone the whole time and whenever I did look up for a song I love, I was just disappointed.
Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk lol
