Mean Girls (PG) Review

Overall Rating

This is a very funny movie about girls in high school, and how the popular girls always get their way. The tables are turned in the end, and the top girls get theirs, so to speak.

No real bad points, unless you don't like movies about "high school".

Lindsay Lohan is the star of "Mean Girls". I want to congratulate the talent scouts at Disney, they are on fire! Let's run through who they have come up with in the past 5 years: Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Hilary Duff, the girl that plays Raven, in "It's so Raven", and now Lindsay. They know how to turn young girls into stars, that is a fact.

I had seen Lindsay in the remake of "Freaky Friday" with Jamie Lee Curtis. It was tough to choose who did a better acting job, Lindsay or Jamie Lee. When I saw that she was going to be in this movie, I had to give it a chance.

Lindsay's characters' name is Cady, pronounced "Katie". She has lived in Africa for the first 16 years of her life, with her American zoologist parents. They come back and she is going to be a "junior" at the local high school. In typical "new student" fashion, no one is being nice to her. A couple of "losers" take her in. There is Damian, a big fat guy, who is gay and proud. Then, his friend, Janice who looks like a young version of Linda Perry of the band "4 Non Blondes". Since she looks like that, she is perceived as being a lesbian by the entire school.

Janice and Damian let Cady know everything about the school. Who she should hang out with, who to avoid, etc. Janice makes it a point to show her the "Plastics". These are the three most beautiful, popular, girls in the school. Their leader is Regina, who is ruthless. Her 2nd in command is Gretchen Wieners - played by the youngest girl from "Party of Five", Lacey Chabert. One strange thing, I think Lacey has had botox, or some type of plastic surgery on the area between her eyebrows. Whenever she makes a face, it scrunches up in a very unnatural looking way. Other than that, she is a very pretty girl. Gretchen's major flaw is that she cares too much about what others think about her. The third girl is Gretchen. She is probably the most attractive of the three, but is so DUMB, that she falls to last in their pecking order.

If any of you have seen "School of Rock", you know how cool the blackboard map of rock n' roll was. In this movie, the same goes for the map of the high school lunchroom. It was hilarious. It had a number of different categories: sporty lesbo chicks, jocks, geeks, smart asians, attractive asians, horny band geeks, the plastics, etc. Janice and Damian ask Cady to sit with them on the second day of school. What is bizarre is that on the third day, the Plastics ask Cady to sit with them.

There is no doubt that Cady is attractive enough to sit with the plastics, but is she MEAN enough? By the end of the lunch, they ask her to sit with them for the rest of the week. The Plastics make sure to tell her how rare this opportunity is.

Cady talks the situation over with Damian and Janice later on. Janice tells her to go ahead and try to get to know the plastics. She thinks it would be cool for Cady to find out everything that they really do, and then tell Janice and Damian so they can make fun of them. Cady agrees to give it a try.

There are a number of current and former Saturday Night Live actors in this movie. Two of them are Tina Fey and Tim Meadows. They both play teachers at the school. I also believe that Tina was one of the writers of the movie.

Well, next thing you know the Plastics induct Cady as their 4th member and they all like her. They tell her that they have rules though. You have to dress a certain way, you can only wear sweatpants on Friday, etc. She agrees to be in their club.

The Plastics are also mean to each other. One of their tricks is to use 3 way dialing. One will call the other and say - wait on the line, I am going to call the 3rd. When the 3rd person gets on, the first person says something rude about the 2nd person - trying to get the 3rd person to agree. If they do, they are totally busted by the 2nd person who is actually on the line. So harsh!

Things start to go wrong, when unknowingly, Cady begins to get a crush on Regina's ex boyfriend. Cady is very smart in math, but since she sits right next to Aaron, she pretends to be dumb so he will help her. He becomes her tutor, and they actually kiss during a study session. Next thing you know, Regina takes him back - and Cady is furious.

Cady and Damian and Janice plot on how to take Regina down. This is where the movie really begins to get funny. The plan has a lot of strategy, and is very funny when put into action. Since Gretchen is so paranoid about being # 2 to Regina - they play on her fear. They start to make Gretchen think that Regina doesn't like her anymore. When that starts to work, Gretchen starts telling all kinds of "secrets" about Regina.

Regina doesn't need to lose any weight, but she maintains that she wants to lose 3 pounds. Cady gives her these "weight gainer" bars, but they are swedish, and so are the directions. She tells Regina they are actually "carb burning" bars, and that she will lose those 3 pounds in no time. Well, she gains about 15 pounds.

At one point the "Plastics" share their secret book with Cady. It is a book where they have taken photos from many people at school, and wrote rude things about them in it - under their picture. They convince Cady to write something in there about her math teacher, who is giving her a hard time about getting bad grades, just to get the attention of some boy.

Somehow Regina finds out about the "behind the scenes" things that Cady has been doing to her. She makes a "fake page" in their book featuring bad things about herself, and turns it in to the school principal as some book she found on school property. Even worse, she made copies of certain pages, and pasted them all over school.

This is when the whole school goes crazy. Since most of the bad things were about other girls in the school - all of the girls start fighting with each other. Tim Meadows' character calls all of the girls into the gymnasium to calm them down.

The rest of the movie deals with the "Spring Dance", and who will be voted King and Queen.
Nominated for queen were Regina, Gretchen, Cady, and Janice. The end is funny and entertaining at the same time.

My sister only had 3 girl friends all through high school, and she never got along with more than one of them at a time. I used to think that was odd. According to this version of girls in high school, it is absolutely normal.