Mean Girls: Not as bad as the TikTok reviews

The newly released Mean Girls was always going to have it’s work cut out, as a musical version of the beloved 2004 movie, featuring Lindsay Lohan and Rachel McAdams. It’s already received a backlash on social media and we definitely have some opinions about it. 

First, the songs. Some of them I would want to listen to repeatedly with special mentions going to Reneé Rap, who plays the iconic Regina George, for giving us a perfect rendition of Someone Gets Hurt and World Burn which gave me chills. Janice and Damien, who were portrayed by Auli’i Cravalho and Jaquel Spivey, get the award for the most entertaining to watch while bringing the vocals. 

However, anyone who has seen or listened to the original Broadway recording of the soundtrack knows the energy the songs hold, especially the song ‘Stupid With Love’. Unfortunately, the big screen version was a little too flat and it did not give the excitement of a teenage crush that you see in the Broadway performance.  

Some songs such as Fearless, Where Do You Belong? and Do This Thing were not included in the movie and It Roars was replaced with What Ifs. Luckily the songs that didn’t make the cut didn’t change the musical too much, but I would have loved to have seen Spivey perform Where Do You Belong?. 

The portrayal of the iconic characters themselves were not too different from the original movie – you could really believe that it is still Regina George and Cady Heron. Cravalho and Spivey were an enjoyment to watch and really took on their roles as Janice and Damien. Spivey had the best job with the famous lines we all quote to this day, “She doesn’t even go here” and “You go Glen Coco”, and it didn’t make me think back to the original movie he just made them his own. 

The movie had references to the 2004 Mean Girls with Regina’s famous cut out top making its appearance in Sexy, and it also brought back Tina Fay and Tim Meadows as Ms. Norbury and Principal Duvall. It was nice to see the friendly faces back together in the movie. Other iconic lines such as “so fetch”, and of course “On Wednesdays we wear pink” were there because it wouldn’t be Mean Girls without them.  

I’m glad that the story wasn’t changed too much to suit the younger generation apart from the amount of filming on phones and social media that was included. 

Finally the big question… is it worth the watch? Honestly, yes and no. If you didn’t grow up with the original Mean Girls, you might enjoy it more as you have nothing to compare it to. As someone who grew up on the orginal version, I am glad I watched it once but I would rather stick to Lindsay Lohan and go see the musical in person when it makes its way to the West End.