“This isn’t your mother’s Mean Girls” goes the tagline for this big-screen adaptation of Tina Fey’s 2018 Broadway musical, itself an adaptation of her 2004 teen movie classic of the same name. For millennials, it’s basically an invitation to fight. But, sadly, a snappy comeback is a little too easy. Not your mother’s Mean Girls? This is exactly your mother’s Mean Girls – just repackaged with a bunch of TikTok cameos and some of Fey’s B-tier jokes. Hell, Ariana Grande managed to do more with the material when she spoofed the original film for her video to “Thank U, Next”.
This Mean Girls is, practically scene by scene, the same story as the OG: homeschooled, socially naive Cady Heron (Angourie Rice) moves back to the United States from somewhere in rural Africa only to discover that the kids of the school cafeteria are no different to the creatures of the savanna. She teams up with the art freaks, Janice (Auliʻi Cravalho) and Damien (Jaquel Spivey), in order to take down queen bee Regina George (Reneé Rapp) and her “plastics”, minions Gretchen (Bebe Wood) and Karen (Avantika), in order to clear the way and win the heart of Regina’s ex, Aaron (Christopher Briney).
