Mean Girls (2004)

 

Originally Reviewed

Sunday September 11, 2005

Mean Girls is another somewhat stereo-typical teen high school film. One where you know half of the drama is true and the other half of it is a little blown out of proportion. All I know is high school in this film is quite different from my high school experience.  Of course being a male "fitting in" and the "girl clicks" is kind of out of my territory, so maybe high school is like this for girls. Still it all makes for a highly entertaining viewing experience.

Lindsey Lohan plays Kadie, a girl home schooled her whole life while growing up in Africa.  When her family moves back to the states it's time for her to begin her first year at public school. She quickly becomes friends with the social outcasts, a gay guy and a Gothic girl, who give her the "down low" on all the different groups of people or "clicks" at the school specifying those she should stay away from, the worst being the "Plastics". The Plastics are the prissy, stuck up girls who, while being super hot, are void of any intelligence or humanity.

Rachel McAdams plays Regina George, the queen bee of the group whose sole existence is to ruin everyone’s life. I still cannot get over the fact at how different Rachel looks, she's hardly recognizable, and looks about seventeen years old in this film when she was actually around twenty-seven at the time. Along with Rachel is the very hot Lacey Chabert who plays Gretchen, the daughter of the creator of the toaster strudel. Lacy reminds me a lot of Jennifer Love Hewitt in terms of looks and the fact that her choice of acting roles has been about as bad. Chabert plays Regina's right hand hottie quite well.

When Kadie gets noticed by the Plastics, because she is rather attractive, she begins to get sucked into the world of high school snobbery. Kadie's outcast friends convince her to take this opportunity to get the scoop on Regina George and try and ruin her life. In the process Kadie begins to become more and more like the Plastics in the way she dresses, talks and treats others. Regina finds out about the plan to ruin her, and turns the tables around on Kadie and the rest of the girls by making copies of the "Burn Book", a book where the girls write hurtful things about all the other girls at school. This leads to more of a mess when everyone begins to read it, and Kadie's life really begins to spiral downwards.

I'm not a Lindsey Lohan fan (especially now that she's turned into a major mess), but during this period of her short decent film career she did a good job. Of course for me Rachel and Lacy stole the show but Lindsey isn't half bad either. The Math Club scenes were my favorite, with KG the Indian math nerd who thought he was all that... hilarious.  Especially when he rips off his shirt after the team won the State Math Finals! Overall, Mean Girls was a surprising teen comedy treat, I really never expected to like it much and while some of the aspects of the film seem a little far fetched it was definitely entertaining.

8/10