Rachel McAdams as Regina, Lacey Chabert as Gretchen and Amanda Seyfried as Karen.
- Contributed photo
Tanya Batson Savage, Freelance Writer
THE TEENAGE years, and especially how Hollywood has figured the American high school makes for great spectator sport. Mean Girls is another match in the eternal game of geeks and freaks versus cool and mean.
Mean Girls is in many ways your standard popularity movie, with a little twist. Cady Heron (Lindsay Lohan), never made it into the geek group because she is an outsider. Additionally, her makeover was not a deliberate attempt to walk the halls of popularity. A clique is like a girl band, they simply don't sing (but then there isn't proof that girl bands sing either). The most important member of the clique is the leader. Legend has it that this girl must be evil incarnate. Regina (Rachel McAdams) is the clique leader in Mean Girls. She is a girl whose petty meanness would make Satan hang his head in shame. Regina is flanked by Karen (Amanda Seifreid) and Gretchen (Lacey Chabert). These two often say the most delightfully stupid things. It's like having Jessica Simpson clones.
CLICHÉD ENDING,
Mean Girls is quite fun right up to a few minutes before its clichéd ending, but such an ending was expected. A surprise would have been heartening, but it really would have been asking too much. The movie is wittily written with the cross references between the animal kingdom and the alternate universe of high school being quite entertaining.
In most popularity flicks, the encounters between the 'good girl' and the 'mean girl' usually end up with the good girl running away crying after being zapped by the ruler of the witchdom. Sometimes, like in Grease the 'good girl' comes back all dolled up, war paint in place and claws/nails painted and unsheathed to do battle. Mean Girls follows the second pattern. When Cady and her friends are wronged, they decide to launch their own shock and awe campaign.
Along with being great fun, Mean Girls tries to bring a deeper meaning. The movie plays on how horribly sheep-like teenagers are. Whatever the popular kids are doing the rest of them follow. When Regina jumps the rest of them follow suit, not even stopping to ask how high. Apparently, individual thought is a very scarce commodity. Mean Girls also shows how easy it is to get lost in the traits you hate especially when no bread crumbs were left for you to find your way back to the real you.
As a result, it gets a little preachy toward the end, and even though it tries to make fun of that, the moral fibre does put pressure on the seams. Even so, the fun never really falls apart, so the flick remains quite enjoyable. The movie is not overly harsh in its satire, nor does it go for too much mean spirited humour. This movie takes Lohan from being an adorable child star to sexy teen queen. Since the remake of The Parent Trap and later the remake of Freaky Friday, Lohan has shown herself to be of admirable talent. Most of this talent seems to lay in natural charm and the fact that she is cute. She still relies heavily on charm but there is evidently talent there as well and her future looks promising. Mean Girls is a fun flick, whether you're still in your teenage years and so understand the world or because you have already passed those years and are therefore thankful you are no longer that silly.
