Mean Girls - Movie Review

WGHS students give their opinion and statements on the recent musical movie, Mean Girls that came out on January 12, 2024.​
​by Cheyenne Seagraves and Malachi Lovett

​WGHS students give their opinion and statements on the recent musical movie, Mean Girls that came out on January 12, 2024.

Shannon Hayes (Junior) states what the movie is about. “The movie is about this girl named Caty. She moves to America from Africa and is just about to start her high school experience because she’s been homeschooled her whole life, and she meets these girls who are like the most popular girls in school and she goes into [their] friend group and she kinda becomes mean to herself. She just has to learn to balance it out between fitting in and not being a meanie.”

She had mixed feelings about the movie, “I think it’s just ‘cause I know so much about the musical, 'cause we did it, and it wasn’t the same, and I wanted it to be the exact same so I was just disappointed when it wasn’t.” She wanted it to be really big and extravagant because the musical is and it wasn’t… she says, “overall, it kinda fell short.”

Shannon agrees with the casting of the movie; however, she didn’t like Angourie Rice’s acting. She'd rather see Sabrina Carpenter playing Caty because she's done the Broadway version since before Covid. 

She continues to say, “The original movie is definitely more modern ‘cause it’s set in current time and not the 2000’s, so there’s more modern aspects to it. It also just gives more insight into it ‘cause there are the songs from the perspectives of the characters while you’re getting a third person view.” 

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​Jazmyne Black (11) offers a synopsis, “It was about this girl and she moves to America and she struggles to fit in, and she falls in love with a boy and the boy has this toxic ex girlfriend, and then she wants to destroy her and she’s the queen bee of the the school, and she has her little entourage and the whole movie’s just about them. I mean it’s Mean Girls so.”

She continues, “I liked it. I didn’t like who played some of the characters, but I enjoyed the movie as a whole.” Her expectations were way higher than what was met, she had a very Broadway Mean Girls version in her head, and "the movie kinda warped the original plotline and the stereotypes behind the movie." 

She questioned, “Like where were Regina’s mini skirts and crop tops? Why was she in baggy clothes and black the whole time? Where’s the pink?” She continues to say the original movie isn't that great anyways but it compared. It did not even compare to the musical; the musical blows that out of the water. 

Gianna Pittaluga (11) talked about how the movie made her feel while watching it, “I had to pull my hoodie over my head because I was so disappointed. Janice was not emo enough, she looked like a 2020 chronically-online skater girl, and I was disappointed that the only person who slayed was Damian. The girl wasn’t even a redhead, she was a strawberry blond.”

She thought it would be better than it was, but it wasn’t. Comparing the original to the new movie Gianna affirmed the original is so much better, she feels bad that kids are going to have to grow up being like "'Oh is that Mean Girls?' And we’re gonna be like 'NO! That’s not Mean Girls, that's nothing like Mean Girls.' Yeah, it sucked."

Sydney Williams (11) said it made her feel nostalgic because she loved the original Mean Girls movie, and it had some very iconic scenes in it that were recreated. It was similar to the first movie in a way so it made her happy. She also likes a lot of the actors there, like Renee Rapps. She went into it already knowing it was a musical so she expected there to be songs. Sydney noticed some differences between the old and new films, “The way they film, they do a lot of different things like modern choices that weren’t in the original Mean Girls movie and they included a lot of social media stars.” Sydney then gave her perfect cast to the mean girls “Sabrina Carpenter, Tate McRae, and Renee Rapp because they did a phenomenal job.”

The new Mean Girls movie came out this year on January 12 making the difference between the original movie almost 20 years.  It stars Renee Rapp as Regina, Avantika Vandanapu as Karen, and Bebe Wood as Gretchen. It also has some actors from the 2004 film such as Tina Fey as Ms. Norbury, Tim Meadows as Principal Duvall, and John Hamm as Coach Carr.

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