Did The New Mean Girls Movie Meet Its Expectations?

We all have seen or know of the classic movie, Mean Girls. If you have never seen it or heard of it, it’s a comedy film that came out in 2004, starring Linsey Lohan, Rachel McAdams, Amanda Seyfried, and Lacy Cabert. The film takes place at a high school in Evanston, Illinois. Cady (Linsey Lohan), just moved from Africa to Evanston. She attends high school for the first time and befriends Janis (Lizzy Caplan) and Damian (Daniel Franzese). Cady then encounters the three mean girls of the school, Regina George (Rachel McAdams), Gretchen Weiners (Lacy Cabert), and Karen Smith (Amanda Seyfried). This trio is infamous for being the meanest out there.  Due to this, Cady, Janis, and Damian plot a plan to ruin the mean girl’s high school career and reputation.

Tina Fey, who starred as Ms. Norbury in Mean Girls, wrote a Broadway musical following the storyline of the movie, with the musical name also being Mean Girls. Composer Jeff Richmond wrote the music, the lyrics were written by Nell Benjamin and choreographer Casey Nicholaw directed it. The musical first opened in 2018 and closed on March 11th, 2020, due to COVID and costs.

Tina Fey then wrote another movie based on the Mean Girls Musical. This new movie is directed by Samatha Jayne and Autero Perez Jr and it stars Reneé Rapp, Angourie Rice, Christopher Briney, and many more! The movie was released on January 12th. 

Fans of the original Mean Girls movie and the musical have been over the moon about this new movie since it was announced. Everyone’s expectations were set very high and after the movie theaters were packed this weekend, do the fans feel that the movie met their expectations?

Did it meet the expectations we all had?

After seeing the movie this past weekend I found it to be very funny and entertaining. The music, dancing, and acting were amazing. Although for some songs you can tell that a lot of autotune was used, making it sound unnatural. But other than that I felt the music was still incredible. The movie kept the whole theater laughing the whole time and there was never a dull moment. In my opinion, I felt that the movie met the expectations that I had for it. 

But let’s see what others think…

Liesel Specht said, “I love the original Mean Girls, and I thought the new one was good too. Usually, a musical movie is expected to be ‘cringy’, and although I’ve heard of some disliking the new Mean Girls, I really enjoyed it. The music portion added a sense of Broadway Musical and made it different from the original. I think the characters were all well casted, and it was really funny. It was entertaining, and I like how they brought back some of the original actors, including Lindsey Lohan.”

Addison Doig said, “When I first went to see the Mean Girls movie and first heard that it was going to be a musical, I didn’t know what I was expecting. At first, I was a little skeptical thinking that it would be bad or cringy. However, throughout the movie, I realized that it was very well casted and had a great musical component to it, along with it being very funny and following the original Mean Girls movie but with small changes throughout the film. Overall I’m very happy with how the movie came out and would definitely recommend seeing it!”

However, Amanda Fawkes did not seem to agree with them, “The whole thing was a giant Elf commercial. They used more autotune in the whole thing than actually singing. It did not meet up to my expectations. Overall it was not very good, I give it a five out of ten, I was expecting better.”

There are a lot of mixed emotions about the new movie and whether or not it met the expectations we had for it. But I would recommend going to see the movie if you haven’t already and getting your own opinion of it. 

This author says that the movie is fresh, share your opinion.

By Kayla Biggica