Mean Girls

reviewed by Dave

Mean Girls is a tolerable piece of fluff that alternately succeeds and fails as it vacillates between biting satire and after-school-special.

Lindsay Lohan, fresh off the success of Freaky Friday (a film that was surprisingly decent, for what it was), stars as Cady, a girl who has been home-schooled in Africa until the age of 16. Her parents are now back in the states, meaning Cady gets her first experience at an American high school.

Cady, of course, doesn’t really fit in, but soon makes friends with a goth girl and a big gay guy. These two take Cady under their wing, showing her the ropes and explaining the pecking order at the school. At the top of the social hierarchy is the clique dubbed “The Plastics” – the school’s wealthiest, prettiest and snootiest girls.

Cady is soon noticed by The Plastics, and is invited to join them. Her “regular” friends encourage her to get in The Plastics and become one of them so she can take down Regina, the head of the clique. Goth Girl has a personal vendetta against Regina because Regina spread rumors that Goth Girl is a lesbian.

Cady agrees to the plan and is soon fighting nastiness with nastiness. While the plan doesn’t work at first, eventually Cady starts to succeed at bringing down Regina. In the process, she ends up becoming the very thing she despises – a nasty, self-absorbed snot with a shot at being the new leader of The Plastics.

Mean Girls works when it’s a biting commentary on high school. The drama, backstabbing, and overall stupidity of high school is on full display, and writer Tina Fey does a good job of satirizing high school at its worst. She’s a writer for SNL, and the comedy in Mean Girls works better than the average night on SNL.

What doesn’t work, though, is the uneven last 15 minutes. Just when the film flirts with becoming The Heathers (a film I didn’t like, btw) for the online generation, it spins around and rushes for feel-good Disney life lessons. Neither of the two extremes really work, but throw them together and you have a movie that has an identity crisis similar to the one faced by the title character.

Unlike Cady, though, the film’s bipolar dysfunction is never really solved. There are glimpses of greatness in Mean Girls, and while I do think Tina Fey should continue to write movies, here’s hoping that her next film is a little more consistent.

What Works: The satire side of Mean Girls. SNL veteran Tim Meadows as the competent high school principal. Tina Fey is decent as the math teacher.

What Doesn’t: The life lessons get a little heavy-handed at the end. Mean Girls has a bit of an identity crisis – is it a biting comedy or an after school special? It needed to decide to be one or the other and stick with the choice.

DVD notable: Deleted scenes are usually deleted for a reason, but there’s a scene here that does a lot to explain the logistics of a major plot point in the movie that otherwise seems highly improbable. It should have been left in the film.

Who Lindsay Lohan reminds me of: A prepubescent Frankie Muniz in drag. And it’s not just the face, it’s also the voice.