Maeve Bidonde, Staff Writer
We’ve all heard of Mean Girls whether it be the 2004 movie or the musical. Last month on January 12th a new Mean Girls movie came out for the world to see. If you haven’t seen the film consider this your spoiler alert.
The film combined the musical and 2004 original film but it was tailored to the current generation. The fashion in the film is what is trending and the phones are also new. They took a classic and modernized it for the current generation to enjoy. With lots of mixed reviews swirling around for this remake, people had a lot of negative things to say about the film.
Most of the reviews focused on how the film wasn’t advertised to be a musical. In the advertisements for the movie it’s implied that it would be but there’s no singing and any scenes with singing are covered with an Olivia Rodrigo song. The positive reviews mostly mentioned the nostalgia it gave the viewer and how excited they were to see it. The common denominator in the reviews is that they don’t specify anything they did right or wrong.
Some of the songs in the movie had some lyrical changes. In Revenge Party, the part where Janis asks Cady if she can still pretend to be friends with the plastics and she talks to Karen about Regina stealing Aaron is in the lyrics in the song on Spotify and part of the recording. The 2024 recording of the song cut that part out and added a new chunk of lyrics in its place.
“I’ll bring the glow sticks, I’ll bring the ‘loons, and we’ll have chocolate ice cream cones Woah, woah, woah I’ll be the DJ spinning the tunes on a turntable made of her bones. We’ll get a piñata ’cause that would be fun And play dress up and Barbies and tag And we’ll roll on the grass and stare up at the sun And we’ll stuff her remains in a bag And throw ’em in the river.” This part didn’t add anything to the song in fact it took away from the narrative of revenge. The only lyric resembling revenge is a DJ turntable made out of Regina’s bones.
At the part of the song where Cady realized she’d end up with Aaron when Regina’s gone, Janis chants “Yes Cady!” in the original. In the new film she chants “Yes B****!” which was an attempt to appeal to Gen Z but it didn’t help the song in any way.
They also changed iconic lines and removed others. They changed Regina’s line in 2004 “Get in loser, we’re going shopping” to just “get in loser.” They also removed the iconic line from the four way phone call “Boo, you w****.” It was most likely removed out of fear of having the movie face controversy. The talent show dance was sexualized more than the first one. In 2004 the closest the dance got to being not
appropriate was a squat and inner thigh smack. The 2024 dance was trying to keep up with trends but it didn’t work.
Overall, the film was an attempt to modernize the already beloved musical and 2004 movie. Modernizing it fell flat because everyone had already fallen in love with the movie and musical. Many also struggled to watch it because they were comparing the 2024 movie to the 2004 movie. Seeing Mean Girls in today’s atmosphere via clothing trends and technology was interesting. If you enjoy musicals and Mean Girls then this is the movie for you.
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