Words by Clélia Gessner

If you are a theatre kid, you have heard of Mean Girls the musical, which premiered on Broadway in 2018 and ran until the shutdown began, never to reopen. The beloved musical is of course based on the iconic 2004 movie of the same name featuring Lindsay Lohan as new girl Cady Heron and Rachel McAdams as the high school Queen Bee Regina George. The original movie is well-known worldwide amongst the general public—the musical version not so much.

So when the trailers for the movie adaptation of the stage musical (adapted from the movie, adapted from a book) first rolled in without giving any hint that this new film was, in fact, a musical, you can understand that most people took it for a 2024 remake of the original. Before I had the chance to see the film, my TikTok and Twitter feeds were flooded with videos taken by cinema patrons during their screenings, shocked that yet another song was starting. Of course we know better and it is annoying to see people make fun of musicals when that is what we love most, but I have to admit I put the blame on the marketing team there.

That being said, I am here to write a review of the movie so let’s talk about what’s actually inside! To be perfectly transparent, I personally have never seen the stage musical and do not think I have watched a full bootleg of the show, nor listened to the cast recording all the way through. I do not have anything against it, I guess it just never spoke to me that much! I’ve known most of the songs for a long time though because of course everyone has been singing them since 2018. I think some of them are catchy—others maybe less. So how did that translate on film?

The first thing to know is that although the film, directed by Samantha Payne and Arturo Perez Jr. with a screenplay by Tina Fey, uses the songs written by Jeff Richmond and Nell Benjamin for the show, many fan-favourites have been cut (such as « It Roars » and « Where Do You Belong ») while others have been reworked. One new song, « What Ifs », was written for Cady (co-written by Reneé Rapp). It was announced quite early on that the soundtrack was going to go in a more ‘pop’ direction in contrast with the Broadway sound that we are accustomed to while the general public might not be. Personally, I thought the new orchestrations still come off as very showtune-y—and of course I don’t mind! I have seen a lot of criticism about these new arrangements but as someone who was not attached to the OBCR I had no problem with them. They sound pretty good! 

What I do have a problem with is… Cady’s vocals. She is supposed to be the main character but does not have many songs to sing anymore (even « Apex Predator » is now brilliantly sung by Janis and Damian), and the truth is it’s probably better this way. Angourie Rice is absolutely perfect as Cady in terms of acting but her voice, while not bad at all, is simply not giving Broadway leading lady. It is very sweet and light but lacks nuance and character. This creates an unfortunate contrast with her excellent portrayal of the character but most of all there is a wide difference between her vocal performance and that of Reneé Rapp, Auli’i Cravalho and Jaquel Spivey as Regina George, Janis ‘Imi’ike (new surname) and Damian Hubbard respectively.

These three simply are the stars of the film. Which is not surprising considering they are Broadway and/or musical pros: Reneé Rapp of course played the role of Regina on Broadway, to much critical acclaim, and is now growing fast as an international pop artist. Jaquel Spivey is known for his performance as Usher in the 2022 Best Musical A Strange Loop. And of course Auli’i Cravalho is the iconic voice of Moana in Disney’s eponymous animated movie. So, not only are they great singers but they know how to put on an acting-through-song performance, and they all shine on camera. 

As I am writing this I just came out of the cinema a couple hours ago, and the numbers that immediately stand out for me are definitely « Someone Gets Hurt », « Revenge Party », « World Burn » and « I’d Rather Be Me ». Of course, they were already the songs I liked most in the musical, but Rapp, Cravalho and Spivey perform the hell out of these tunes. They are also very well shot. « Someone Gets Hurt » and « World Burn » look like actual music videos, all the while advancing the plot in a very effective way. They perfectly showcase Rapp’s out-of-this-world vocals (although I was missing one of the higher, more explosive « ‘Till someone gets hurt » lines towards the end of « Someone Gets Hurt ») and portray Regina George as the fascinating Queen of High School that she is. « Revenge Party » makes for a very fun number, and just like when they open the movie with « Cautionary Tale », Cravalho and Spivey give everything in this song. Watching it feels like watching an actual Broadway performance. Cravalho tops it off with an explosive « I’d Rather Be Me », which is in my opinion the best version I’ve ever heard of the song—and we have all heard it a lot. Spivey also has a very funny yet technically impressive moment with a French version of the iCarly theme that his character Damian performs at the Christmas talent show—as a French person I must say the words were mostly unintelligible but it was still very fun to watch!

Avantika as Karen Shetty and Bebe Wood as Gretchen Wieners are both quite good in their respective roles, both with quite a different take than their movie and stage predecessors, which is refreshing. They do not have a lot of material to sing but do quite well with what they have. Christopher Briney as Aaron Samuels is believable but ultimately forgettable. He doesn’t sing at all, like all the adult characters (who arguably don’t sing that much in the musical anyway). This makes him stand out in the sense that he is the only main character whose thoughts we have no access to, so it is harder to really care about him in my opinion.

I keep saying the songs still have a distinctive Broadway sound and this is in part due to a great singing ensemble which are present in most songs and visibly so—which leads me to the screenplay. The ensemble frequently snap, dance and sing backing vocals behind the main characters as they would in a stage show, which was great for me but I can understand how silly it must look to people who come in not knowing much about the codes of musicals. I do have to say this film is great for theatre kids because it has a really good balance in terms of suspension of disbelief and diegesis—let me explain. 

Most movies are shot as if the scenes were straight out of normal life, but musicals require you to accept that people are going to burst into songs to express their emotions and that in the universe of the story, the songs are not diegetic (they are not really singing and dancing). It’s always very funny to me when movie musicals turn this around and show a character really dancing and singing in the middle of a normal crowd, staring at the character as if they are crazy because that would be a normal reaction in real life. This was done in Wonka recently and again in Mean Girls a little when Cady sings « Stupid With Love ». I thought that was really nice. 

There is also a line that I thought was brilliant, during the gym apology/confession session, when a girl (who has been introduced as a band kid) apologises for being mean to her friend and explains it by essentially saying that she was on edge because « Revenge Party » was a hard song to play. Principal Duvall is confused by this line, because the song does not exist in the real universe of the movie, but Ms Norbury, played by Tina Fey who wrote the screenplay for both movies and the book of the stage musical, tells him he couldn’t possibly understand. This ties things together very neatly because it makes you realise that the band kids are always the ones physically playing the music during musical numbers, and because Tina Fey represents the bridge between the musical and the real world, blurring the lines between the diegetic and non-diegetic. For a musical movie I thought this was really interesting framing!

Another framing device that is very present is TikTok and social media in general. I feel like this has become mandatory in high school movies in the past couple years, especially adaptations of musicals as we have seen with Dear Evan Hansen for example (no comment on that one), because it makes the movie look relevant to the reality of being a high-schooler, I guess. Being a high-school teacher I feel like this aspect is a little exaggerated—why would the whole world be talking about the feud between Regina George and Cady Heron from a random school in Illinois, really? But I also recognise the fact that social media is very much an essential factor of the current high school experience, so I was willing to let that slide and I even loved the use of the TikTok format for the opening with « A Cautionary Tale », or for Karen’s big moment in « Sexy », because the way it was done really makes sense to me as a TikTok user.

All in all, I had a nice time watching the movie adaptation of Mean Girls the musical, even though I am not a big fan of the stage musical. Because I am familiar with all the pre-existing material I could just sit back and enjoy everything, including a cameo from both the musical’s original Gretchen Ashley Park and—spoiler alert—the original movie’s Cady, Lindsay Lohan herself. Most of the iconic lines and beats from the 2004 movie are replicated so it can sometimes feel like copypasta but I personally chose to simply enjoy the references. If you are a theatre kid, you should enjoy the film… but maybe don’t bring your musical-hating friends because their criticism might ruin your viewing experience. You’ve been warned!

Mean Girls came out on January 12th in the US and should now be playing in a cinema near you wherever you live in the world.