KRR: So, Our Beloved 'Mean Girls' Were Perfectly Imperfect Queens.

This is the second review following the theme: The Queen's Gambit, movies that celebrate queens in their many different forms. Click the following link to see the first review about Sofia Coppola's 2006 biopic Marie Antoinette. Now, we move on to an entirely different sort of queen - a prom queen.

The concept of The Queen's Gambit as a theme took quite a bit of brainstorming on my part. I'm always looking for interesting and relevant themes to connect movies to (and by extension, these reviews), so when I started the idea originated as "Movies with Strong Women at the Core." Pretty boring and basic if you ask me, but that's why I kept brainstorming. That being said, there are quite a few movies that instantly jumped to my mind when I thought of that idea: Alien, Thelma & Louise, Clueless, Hidden Figures, Mean Girls. However, as you are well aware, I decided to narrow that idea down to something more specific - queens - and thus I lost the opportunity to write about all of those movies. All, save one: Mean Girls.

Tina Fey's 2004 high school comedy Mean Girls is, without question, one of the most important pieces of art for the Millennial generation. I reckon everybody born after 1986 in the English-speaking world can quote this movie, it's that iconic. But if you're in that .01% of people who don't know this movie by heart, or you're born before the late '80s, here's the gist of the movie: A teenage girl named Caty (Lindsay Lohan) learns to navigate the stereotypical social environment known as high school, after she's spent her entire life homeschooled and abroad. At North Shore High she gets in good with the prettiest, meanest, and richest clique, the Plastics, led by Regina George (Rachel McAdams), and Caty is slowly corrupted, thus becoming a "mean girl" herself.

Cliché? Sure. That's because it's based on the parenting book Queen Bees and Wannabes, a guide to the comically shallow world of teenage drama. Just like Marie Antoinette, Caty Heron and Regina George are teenage queens who ruled a generation.

-SPOILERS AHEAD-

Before we really get into this, I want to say two things right off the bat: First, if you haven't seen this movie, see it. Really, just see it. I'm not gonna break down every moment in the plot, cause I'm just going to operate under the assumption that you've seen it. Second, and more importantly, I love this movie. I really, really, really love this movie. Like most folks in my generation, I've seen Mean Girls more times than I can remember, and I will never turn down an opportunity to rewatch it. It's one of my favorites. I needed to get that off my chest at the start so I don't get hate mail for not giving it a perfect 10. (Certain followers of mine were less than thrilled when I gave Starship Troopers a 6.9. Please don't attack me for this review.)

Since we're reviewing movies about queens, it seems only appropriate to start this review of Mean Girls by talking about the queen's court of North Shore High: Regina George, and her "Army of Skanks," Gretchen Wieners (Lacey Chabert) and Karen Smith (Amanda Seyfried). I'll let Janis Ian tell it:

The Plastics are one of cinema's greatest royal circuses, even if they rule from a cafeteria table. Beginning at the bottom: Amanda Seyfried, also known for Mama Mia!, Les Mis, and soon(!) Mank, maximizes every second she's on screen, despite being third-in-line to the throne of the Plastics. "I'm psychic. It's like I have ESPN or something," is one of the funniest lines in the movie, and Seyfried's delivery is perfect. She could not be better. Lacey Chabert, of Party of Five fame, was given the role of Gretchen Wieners, Regina's right hand woman, on a silver platter. The character was specifically created for her, and it's pretty clear why. She's incredible. She looks and acts like someone who would be rich off of toaster strudel fortunes, while also being one of the stupidest people in the world. I love her. 

Gretchen Wieners gets a bad rap for "not growing" by the end of this movie, which is a fair but misguided critique. I don't think Gretchen needs to grow. She's a decent person - not really a mean girl at heart - who will always get what she wants as long as she lives. What's the incentive for her to grow? I say let her stay the way she is, cause she's funny as hell.

Didn't you know.

Of course, the queen of the Plastics is Regina George, and I've already gone on too long without really talking about her. Regina George is evil incarnate. She also happens to be the best part of this movie. Rachel McAdams steals the movie right out of Lindsay Lohan's hands by becoming one of the most iconic characters of the 21st century. (We'll get to Lohan in a minute.) While Regina may be evil - like when she calls a girl's mom pretending to be from Planned Parenthood just to get her grounded - Rachel is so good at the role that you can't help but root for her. (This seems to be a common theme with evil queens.) Regina George terrorizes North Shore High, starting rumors that lead to fights and fights that lead to brawls, and yet she always comes out on top. The final act of this movie takes place at the school's prom, where Regina actually loses the election for prom queen, but still somehow reigns supreme. Sure, the crown is split, but everyone knows who's still in charge. And that may or may not be because of her fateful accident.

Let's talk about that. I have a lot of problems with the last 15 minutes of this movie, and they all start with Regina George's accident. Following the film's climactic school-wide fight scene, Cady and Regina get into an argument out front. Regina, while telling Cady off, walks across the street, only to turn back and give her one last retort. In that moment, Regina gets PLOWED OVER BY A FUCKING BUS!

Right then does the movie fly off the rails, not because Regina gets hit (I love this twist), but because Regina doesn't die! Not only does Regina live, but she goes on to walk a few weeks later, and become an All-Star lacrosse player within a few months. Shockingly unrealistic.

Apparently this is all you need if you get destroyed by a bus.

The real reason I don't like the last 15 minutes isn't because Regina lives - long live this evil queen - it's because the movie suddenly becomes too neat to properly execute the remaining plot. Despite the entire school hating her for supposedly pushing Regina in front of a bus, Caty goes on to win prom queen, which she subsequently rejects by saying "everyone" is the prom queen. Gag. Bad speech. All of the characters' arcs are tied up with nice little bows and the movie ends. But exactly none of it makes sense. I think Tina Fey just ran out of juice and was like, "Well, we have to end the movie somehow. The studio wants it to be happy. Fuck it." So they gave it a happy ending, albeit one that doesn't work. 

I digress. I don't want to expound upon the bad things about Mean Girls. I want to celebrate this royal miracle, so let's talk about Lindsay Lohan. I'll just come right out and say it: this is one of the .....three? best performances in any high school movie ever. It's up there with Matthew Lillard in Scream and Judd Nelson in The Breakfast Club. Lohan gives a genuinely nuanced performance in a movie where that wasn't demanded. The transformation from perfect homeschooled girl to pretty mean girl isn't rough or noticeable. Lohan plays it very gradually, so that it feels natural, even though it's happening in about 80 minutes. The part of Caty would fail in so many other actors' hands or would be entirely overshadowed by Rachel McAdams, and yet neither happen in this film. Lindsay Lohan doesn't have the best character in Mean Girls but she's the fucking star nonetheless. 

Get outta the way Daniel Day-Lewis, Lindsay's here.

The only other star worth mentioning here is the script. It's an--

WAIT.

I forgot about Tim Meadows. Tim Meadows appreciation time! He is the only man in this movie worth thinking about, and he's easily, easily one of the funniest characters. Here's a clip. I love Tim Meadows. I wish he were my principal. Sorry, we'll get back to the script after this. 

Hi. Okay, we're back. We were talking about the script right? Yeah. The script.

It doesn't need to be said that it's one of the most quotable movies ever made, but I would feel bad if I didn't mention it again. And I already feel bad because I was never a teenage girl, yet here I am writing a review about Mean Girls. Now, if you're like me, you remember this movie as perfectly scripted. Unfortunately, that isn't the case.

I always forget about the liberal use of the word "retarded" in this, just as I forget about the unquestionably racist use of "Africa" as a lone joke place where all black people are from. There are definitely moments when it shows that this script was written in the early 2000s, which sucks, because generally speaking, the script is fucking awesome. It's not Die Hard, but it's close. An entire cultural holiday has been made out of October 3rd simply because of the line: "On October 3rd he asked me what day it was. It's October 3rd." How many other movies can say that?

People love Mean Girls, a 97-minute movie, the way others love Star Trek, which has too many minutes of content to even try to calculate. That's powerful. That a short movie about high school stereotypes - the artsy weirdo, the flamboyantly gay guy, the rich bitch - has as large a following as one of the most successful television shows of all time, is no small feat; especially since, technically speaking, the movie falls flat on so many levels (i.e. the costumes are bad, the soundtrack is worse, it has more plot holes than a colander, and the ending.... well, we already covered that). And yet, Mean Girls lives on because what it gets right, it gets perfect.

Regina George and Cady Heron are not real queens - although Regina would probably disagree - but with their grasp on our generation and the ones to come, they may as well be. It's rare for a movie to instantly become a cultural touchstone. It's rare for one to be universally beloved, despite its flaws. It's rarer still for a film to come out and make a 23 year old man wish he could be a mean girl for just a day.

Mean Girls did all that. So, if you think it's a 10, I don't blame you. I just wish it had ended with the bus scene. That would've been so fetch.

It must've been a Wednesday.

Mean Girls KRR: 7.9/10