Mean Girls (PG)
Opens July 8
Running Time: 97 min

Cast: Lindsay Lohan, Rachel McAdams, Lizzy Caplan
Director: Mark Waters

How To Become a Bitch in Under 2 Hours

By Mary-Ann Russon • UrbanWire
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Bitching, lying, backstabbing.

You’ll see plenty of that and more in Mark Waters’ Mean Girls, which is one big catfight.

Hollywood’s new teen “it” girl Lindsay Lohan, who made a comeback last year in Disney’s Freaky Friday, returns to the big screen as Cady Heron, a junior at North Shore High School. Growing up on the African safaris with her zoologist parents, Cady has always been home-schooled, and is about to embark on the biggest adventure of her life – high school.

Once there, Cady makes friends with Goth girl Janis (Lizzy Caplan) and her effeminate pal Damian (Daniel Franzese), who warn her to stay away from “the Plastics”, a popular girl clique – nasty elitists who love putting other students down. However, in a weird twist of fate, the leader of the Plastics, Regina George (Rachel McAdams) takes a liking to Cady, and when she discovers that Cady’s never been to high school before, Regina and her friends Gretchen (Lacey Chabert) and Karen (Amanda Seyfried) decide to reinvent Cady, and show her the ropes to queening it at high school. Did they not see that such charity projects were similarly disastrous in 1995’s Clueless?

Cady is at first hesitant to join the Plastics, but Janis spurs her on, in the hopes that Cady will gather enough dirt on Regina to bring her down once and for all. What follows is a web of deceit, betrayal, backstabbing and boyfriend-snatching that finds Cady transforming into one of the popular girls herself, with disastrous results.

Although entertaining in parts, Mean Girls can’t compare to flicks like 10 Things I Hate About You (1999), which set the standard for teen movies with its fast-paced wit and believable set-in-high-school plot. Though Mean Girls tries to follow the familiar format all teen movies have, showcasing school stereotypes and how segregated high school life can be, the plot is seriously wanting and highly illogical in parts.

One huge illogical point is the whole situation with the boyfriend, Aaron Samuels (Jonathan Bennett). Cady falls for Aaron without realising that he is Regina’s ex-boyfriend. When Regina finds out, she promises to hook Cady up with Aaron, but instead gets back together with him at his party. What doesn’t make sense is that it turns out Regina never dumped him – Aaron had dumped her because he couldn’t stand the way she acted. So why would he suddenly, miraculously get back together with Regina right in front of Cady, especially when he had invited Cady to the party as his date? And because one of the main themes in the movie is the fight over this guy, the plot really seemed to fall apart for me from that moment on.

To be fair, the gags in the film were entertaining (though somewhat cheesy), which is probably why it has done well at the box office, and Mean Girls does try to tackle a serious issue not often featured by teenage films – the way girls see themselves and how their insecurities create a competitive, cat-eat-cat atmosphere much like that of an African jungle. The movie does redeem itself with a very sweet climax, but even that is spoilt by the very cliché ending.

The acting in this film was just “aite” (alright) to me, to quote American Idol’s Randy Jackson. In my opinion the best actors in Mean Girls were Tina Fey, the Maths teacher Ms Norbury, who played a vital role in the lead-up to the climax, and Rachel McAdams (Regina). Indeed Rachel McAdams seems to be doing very well for herself right now, with lots of upcoming movies including a starring role in the soon-to-be-released romantic drama The Notebook (Warner Brothers).

If you like watching teen flicks with cheesy gags, pretty faces, and lots of bitching, you’ll like this film. But if it’s a deeper film you’re looking for, you might want to give this one a miss.

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

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