Review: Mean Girls for the TikTok Generation

Why remake a perfectly good movie? I’ve asked this question before, specifically about the new version of Paramount Pictures’ Mean Girls, which hits theaters January 12. The 2004 original, written by Tina Fey and based on Rosalind Wiseman’s Queen Bees and Wannabes, instantly joined the canon of classic American teen films — a sassy rejoinder to the rose-tinted world of John Hughes, but not nearly as cynical as Heathers. It was perfect, and as a nostalgia piece for those of us who came of age during the Bush administration, it still is.

Since then, Fey and her composer husband Jeff Richmond, along with lyricist Nell Benjamin, have adapted Mean Girls into a hit Broadway musical. That isn’t reason enough to remake the film, but this is: In the last two decades, the rules of being an American teenager (and especially ways one can be bullied as an American teenager) have irrevocably changed with the advent of smartphones and social media. What was once likely to live and die as a local embarrassment, only resurrected in whispers at class reunions, now has the potential to become fodder for the whole world through the Internet — where it will live forever. This is a radical shift, and smartly, it is the focus of Fey’s shrewdly revamped screenplay.

The basic story remains: Cady Heron (Angourie Rice) moves with her mother (Jenna Fischer) from Kenya to suburban Illinois. Home-schooled for her entire life, she will now attend North Shore High School, a complex and cliquey ecosystem ruled over by an apex predator named Regina George (Reneé Rapp), with the support of her hyenas Gretchen (Bebe Wood) and Karen (Avantika). Queer art kids Janis (Auli’i Cravalho) and Damien (Jaquel Spivey) are the first to take Cady in; but when Regina shows an interest in the newcomer, they scheme to use Cady as a secret agent tasked with toppling the queen. But will Cady become so enamored with popularity that she will attempt to seize the class ring of power for herself?

A thrilling element of horror creeps into this telling of Mean Girls in the heartbeat percussion and shrill strings of Richmond’s music (excellent music production by Hanan Rubinstein and supervision by Mary-Mitchell Campbell). There’s also Bill Kirstein’s terrifying and seductive cinematography, which shows just enough to make us imagine the world beyond the frame.

Under the direction of Samantha Jayne and Arturo Perez Jr., production numbers burst out of the screen, colorful and caffeinated (I particularly enjoyed “Revenge Party”) with the feel of a really good music video: Janis’s second-act number, “I’d Rather Be Me,” seems to be entirely one panning shot (heroic work by editor Andrew Marcus). They have thoughtfully considered every shot for maximum impact.

We can see that in the sneaky first appearance of Regina, shockingly clad in a black leather jacket (smart and unexpected costumes by Tom Broecker). Rapp lets us know what a threat she is in through her ice-cold gaze, the unflinching glare of a medieval monarch who has just sentenced someone to death.

The supporting cast delivers thoughtful and personalized spins on their characters: Cravalho’s Janis is simultaneously much more certain of who she is (explicitly a lesbian) but also more vulnerable. Spivey (who wowed Broadway in A Strange Loop) proves just as adept at charming the camera, consistently earning fresh laughs with lines we’ve all heard before. Wood endows Gretchen with a nervous perfectionism that makes her betrayal of Regina feel liberatory. And Avantika slays during the Halloween production number “Sexy,” which features some of the most complex choreography (by Kyle Hanagami) and camera work in the film.

Most surprising of all is the transformation of Cady: With her baby cheeks, Rice is an angelic Hummel figurine brought to life, seemingly so much milder than Lindsay Lohan before her. But with a single cross of her legs as she banishes Regina from their lunch table, she reveals the darkness lurking beneath that adorable smile. And sure enough, as Regina retreats, everyone whips out their phones to immortalize her shame.

Fey and the directors cleverly spotlight the role of social media in high school power politics from the opening shot, a TikTok video of Janis and Damien singing “A Cautionary Tale.” It casts the Internet as a Brechtian frame through which other students and even total strangers may comment on the happenings at North Shore High, compounding the humiliation of our main characters and even playing a role in Regina’s downfall (she’s not truly defeated until she’s been dragged online). The entire Burn Book sequence has been reimagined to account for this shift in human behavior, resulting in a finale that is even more anxiety-inducing than the 2004 original. The stakes are so much higher now.

It would be nice to imagine that online bullying, girl-on-girl crime, and our capacity to relish it as gladiatorial sport are things that we grow out of, but the continuing popularity the Real Housewives franchise proves that this just isn’t true. Ever the optimist, Fey makes the case in Mean Girls that it’s never too late to choose a different path — even in 2024.