When is a reboot not a reboot? Maybe when it’s the Mean Girls reboot, which is based on the 2017 Broadway musical, which was adapted from the 2004 film (itself loosely inspired by the 2002 non-fiction parenting book Queen Bees And Wannabes). While it might feel like nu-Mean Girls comes with a lot of sparkly pink baggage attached, in the event, from the zippy opening prologue number onwards, it’s very much a case of speedy boarding onto a first-class flight of fancy that requires zero familiarity with previous incarnations, but which manages to simultaneously reward loyalists with some decent inside jokes.
One of the great things about the switch to musical format is that the songs give us a direct window into characters’ feelings and motivations, breaking the fourth wall in ways that would feel straight-up clunky if there wasn’t a tune involved. Characters other than Cady Heron (Angourie Rice, in the Lindsay Lohan role) feel more fleshed out, while Cady’s voiceover from the original is gone — who needs an inner monologue when you can turn to camera and belt out a fully-fledged power ballad with an army of choreographed back-up dancers?
Brand-new lines, subtle updates and evolutions are where the film shines
The basic template remains the same. New student Cady is befriended by two likeable misfits, Damian (Jaquel Spivey) and Janis (Auli’i Cravalho), who convince her to help them mess with A-list clique The Plastics, sabotaging their leader Regina (Reneé Rapp). So the plot hews pretty close to the original. It’s the moments that feel like original Mean Girls cosplay that sometimes fall flat, while brand-new lines, subtle updates and evolutions are where the film shines. Dim bulb Karen (Avantika Vandanapu, firing on all cylinders) breathlessly comforting Regina over an unfortunate massive zit on her face and landing on, “It’s sexy, like a face breast,” works way better than most of the occasions where we hear an endlessly meme’d 2004 line, quoted verbatim.
Apart from being straight-up funny, 30 Rock-style, Tina Fey’s script also has an ear for the way that the well-meaning language of modern progressive discourse can be weaponised in bad faith. Witness Regina whispering huskily to Aaron that she has “a lot of unresolved trauma from the way things ended with us”, or Cady getting called out at Halloween: “If you don’t dress slutty, that is slut-shaming us.” New generation, new vernacular, same mind-games.