Mean Girls

A home-schooled white girl from Africa (Charlize Theron?) is plunked into her first social setting upon enrolling into a real-life American high school, where she’s forced to deal with the daily teen angst of cliques, gossip, backstabbing, boy crushes and oh yeah…homework. Lots of short skirts and hard…knocks ensue.

A slightly above-average teen comedy that isn’t as biting or dark as you might believe from its title, but quirky and fun enough to recommend to anyone looking for something that blends elements from previous hits such as CLUELESS, ELECTION and HEATHERS, with Lindsay Lohan tossed in as the lead. I liked Lohan in FREAKY FRIDAY and she’s pretty good here as well, delivering a cutesy, believable performance of an adorable, naïve girl who turns into a “Plastic”, and who must then figure out who she really is (I think I just described by ex-girlfriend…hahaha…I kid, I kid because I love) The rest of the cast is also padded nicely with two nifty secondary performances standing out, namely “the gay guy”, who is about as perfectly gay as a gay teen can be, and the “Indian math dude”, who cracked me up with his “thugz” behavior. In fact, I liked the gay guy enough to recommend him for a friggin’ spin-off movie called…you guessed it: THE GAY GUY! I can see it now…gay guy pink shirts, gay guy hats, gay guy condoms…I’m telling you, somebody write this, sell it and make dillions! The man’s rendition of “Beautiful” was the bomb, yo! But I digress. I also liked both Tina Fey and Tim Meadows (where you been, bro-ham?) as the so-called school “adults”, as well as the three lead “Plastic” chicks, but mostly because they looked damn sweet in them short skirts. Despite being a semi-pervert myself, I actually look down upon this icky trend of young girls bearing short skirts and tight tops, particularly those who don’t even have enough grass in the infield to play ball, but that’s a whole other story, review and conversation altogether (that said, the Queen Bee of the group is apparently 28 years old in real life!)

The film’s first half is decent, but I thought it moved a little too slowly for my taste. The characters were leisurely established, with few laughs to be had (at least by me), save for the aforementioned doofuses. But unlike most films that fall apart in the second half, I appreciated this one’s denouement more with an interesting development to the lead character, a couple of memorable one-liners and a nice feminist message slipped into the proceedings (although not very subtle, but still effective). Some of the things I didn’t like about the film included its lack of bite, which I was definitely expecting from someone the likes of Fey, who also wrote the film’s screenplay (in her defense, the film’s original draft apparently had an R-rating, with the final product watered down to a PG-13), the lame and continuous correlation between the African jungle and high school teens (yawn), the lack of Amy Poehler (her character was moronic though…but I like her on “SNL”) and Lacey Chabert’s tan (not sure why, but it just annoyed me on its own-thankfully, her big boobs more than made up for it) Overall, I can’t foresee this film being dubbed “original” by anyone or qualifying to be in the same league as the aforementioned successes, but it’s a decent time at the movies with an affable lead actress, a few laughs, a couple of memorable characters, a spunky soundtrack and short skirts. “Say crack again.” “Crack!”

PS: I think I’ve already said this in, at least, one previous review but if I hear the “supposed joke” about a dumb girl in a film believing herself to have ESP and saying “I think I have ESPN” one more time, I swear that I’ll hunt the screenwriter down myself and…well, ask him/her to come up with something more creative next time (I’m a pacifist, what can I say) Point being…enough with that joke, Hollywood…please!

(c) 2021 Berge Garabedian