Mean Girls (2024) | Film Review

 

When new student Cady (Angourie Rice) makes friends with the schools mean girls, led by queen bee Regina George (Reneé Rapp), she makes the mistake of falling for Regina's ex-boyfriend and finds out just how crazy high school can be.

I was looking forward to this movie so much! It's been on my radar since it was announced and I couldn't wait to finally see it!

Thankfully I loved the movie! I didn't think I would at the beginning, for reasons I'll explain. But by the end, I was obsessed.

At the start, everything took a bit of getting used to. This is probably because I'd watched the original so recently, but I wasn't prepared for things to feel so familiar, and then the addition of songs felt a bit jarring.

But I got over this really quickly.

Let's start with the music. I had never heard any of these songs before the movie (other than 'World Burn'), so I went in completely fresh. So many of the songs are incredible, and since watching the movie I've had the soundtrack on repeat. I'm listening to it now as I write this!

If you want some recommendations from the soundtrack, definitely check out 'A Cautionary Tale', 'Meet the Plastics', 'Apex Predator', 'Revenge Party', 'I'd Rather Be Me', 'I See Stars' and of course, 'World Burn'. All of the songs are amazing in the movie, but these are the ones that I think hold up best outside the film too.

The film did a really good job of taking things from the original while also being its own thing. For me, I actually preferred when it wasn't quoting from the original, because it really did feel like its own thing. The writing was great! I loved all the upgrades and changes.

The press for the movie makes it out like Regina is the main character, but watching it, I don't really feel like Regina was more prevalent than any of the other characters. Everyone had their parts to play, and for the most part things felt equal. In fact, the only thing I'd say about the characterisation was that Cady was probably the least interesting character in the film. Which isn't to say she wasn't interesting at all, but I felt like I already knew everything about her - I wanted to hear more from Janis (Auliʻi Cravalho) and Gretchen (Bebe Wood), for example.

The cast was amazing. And like the rest of the world, I'm more than a little bit in love with Reneé Rapp, but I've also loved Angourie Rice in a couple of her previous projects, and I've loved Auliʻi Cravalho forever, so it was really nice to see the three of them together.

Overall, I had such a good time seeing this movie! The stage play is coming to the UK this summer and I really want to see it too because I love the songs, the story and everything about it! The movie wasn't perfect, but it's fun, and if you're a musical fan it's a must watch!

8/10