Rebooted Mean Girls was an imitation of greatness, writes FLORA GILL

It’s a Wednesday and I’m about to look at the 2024 remake of Mean Girls. So, in fact, I’m sporting pink. If you don’t know why, then you will need to by some means, inexplicably, have missed the funniest cult movie of the early noughties.

For my technology, Mean Girls was iconic. Brilliantly skewering the cliques of a US highschool, the 2004 unique adopted the efforts of recent lady Cady Heron as she tried to slot in. I used to be 14 when it got here out, and it felt to me and my mates like the primary actual movie about our age group.

We have been too younger when hits like Clueless and Pretty in Pink have been launched, and the characters in up to date movies like Legally Blonde have been all in faculty – previous the age when college gossip could make or break you. I used to be not one of many cool ladies at college and, like most individuals my age, had skilled first-hand the ache of friends speaking about you behind your again.

So I raced to see Mean Girls with a gaggle of mates. I may fake that it resonated for its waspish commentary on the societal expectations positioned on teenage ladies – however actually it was simply very, very humorous. It struck such a chord that my finest good friend got here dressed as Cady to my 18th birthday. October 3 (the day on which Cady’s crush asks her what date it’s, now referred to as ‘Mean Girls Day’) will eternally stand out in my diary, and I nonetheless quote traces from the movie – a proud ‘You go, Glen Coco’ or a disillusioned ‘Boo, you whore’ can apply to so many conditions. I’ve just lately used each in response to mates telling me they’re doing Dry January.

But now 33 – sarcastically a 12 months older than Amy Poehler was when taking part in the ‘cool mom’ within the unique – I take my seat within the cinema uncertain what to anticipate, or who this reboot is absolutely aimed toward.

Angourie Rice stars as the primary character Cady Heron within the rebooted model of Mean Girls

Like Matilda and The Color Purple, Mean Girls has gone from being a well-loved movie to successful stage musical… after which again to being a movie of the musical. From the trailer you may not realise this. In truth, viewers in America have complained of being tricked into watching the movie with no clue it contained singing.

Not that each one musical variations are dangerous. Generally talking I’m an enormous fan, but I’ve learnt they will make a much-loved story much better (as with Les Miserables) or far worse (I’ll by no means get again these two hours I spent watching Lord of the Rings: The Musical). So I used to be left questioning how near the unique this song-filled remake could be.

The reply? This is an nearly scene-for-scene reprise of the unique, solely set within the 2020s.

The unique 2004 Mean Girls line-up of  Lacey Chalbert, Lindsey Lohan, Rachel McAdams and Amanda Sefried

In the unique film Ms Lohan performed home-schooled teen Cady (the actress pictured with co-star Daniel Franzese)

There’s no threat of spoilers, as a result of both you’ve seen the unique (and so can be aware of 60 per cent of the brand new movie’s script) otherwise you haven’t – through which case it is best to skip the remake and watch the 2004 model as an alternative.

Flora Gill wore pink to look at the 2024 remake of Mean Girls

The downside, sarcastically, is that the identical artistic fingers are on each. When Matilda The Musical was being made, you had the quirky genius of comic Tim Minchin on the tiller to supply a contemporary perspective to the 1996 Danny DeVito movie adaptation of Roald Dahl’s traditional.

But this can be a musical movie by Tina Fey, tailored from a stage musical by Tina Fey, which in itself was tailored from a movie by Tina Fey.

It’s as if she’s merely checked out her work on the unique and determined: ‘This is all hilarious, let’s hold all of it in.’ Unfortunately, because the movie goes on, for a superfan like me this smacks of boredom-inducing laziness reasonably than a recap of comedian genius.

Practically each good second is a carbon copy from 20 years in the past; there are nearly no new delights for me to take pleasure in and embrace. Indeed it feels much less like a reboot than a nerdy imitation of greatness. It was like the youngsters from High School Musical have been placing on a Mean Girls play.

The singing was good, I’ll give it that; Reneé Rapp, who performs Regina George, and Auli’i Cravalho (beforehand identified for voicing Moana within the Disney movie) who performs Janice have been the breakaway stars, and I absolutely anticipate to see their meteoric rise. But their singing is significantly better than the songs. I’m positive watching the stage present stay in a theatre is magical, however that doesn’t come throughout on display screen, the place the manufacturing values felt no extra spectacular than a season finale of TV present Glee.

I used to be completed by midway by means of, and able to stroll when chief Mean Girl Regina George lastly bought hit by the bus.

You may suppose that none of this might hassle immediately’s youngsters. Yet, like lots of Gen Z, my 16-year-old sister Edith is obsessive about nineties and noughties tradition (she’s watched Friends extra instances than I’ve). So I think this non-reboot gained’t wash with them both.

On the plus facet, the producers have modernised the setting nicely. There is a world the place they might have turned the movie’s ‘Burn Book’ (a bitchy scrapbook of pictures and snide feedback in regards to the titular Mean Girls’ schoolmates) right into a Twitter account and had all of them voting for who had probably the most ‘rizz’ (that’s ‘charisma’ to the over-40s) on the end-of-year dance. But astutely it’s solely the ‘cool mom’ that’s desperately throwing round fashionable slang like ‘slay’ and her personal new hashtag.

Instead, the updates are refined – the to-camera items from the unique work completely now as TikToks, and there are even a few cameos from well-known influencers. Then in fact there are different welcome corrections to mark altering sensibilities: calling somebody a lesbian is now not an insult, making your self appear silly to draw a boy is known as out, and all of the overt racism of the primary movie is fortunately absent.

Despite my criticisms, I nonetheless loved myself. Half my love for the unique is in my recollections of watching it with my mates, of getting a shared lexicon. I used to be by no means going to look at the primary movie within the cinema with my little sister, however I’ll take her to see this model, warts and all. Anything that may drag us each away from our respective gadgets and get us to make a reminiscence over cartons of popcorn is completely fetch in my ebook.