Mean Girls
Rated PG-13 for sexual content, language and some teen partying.
reviewed by Christopher Lyon
Teenage (and “tween”) girls must go to a lot of movies. Why else would there be a new movie made just for them coming out every two weeks? Ladies, you are an economic force at the box office.
As movies for and about teen girls go, “Mean Girls” is a lot less fantasy, a lot more crude, and more funny than the norm.
The Story
Lindsay Lohan (“Parent Trap,” “Freaky Friday,” “Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen”) plays Cady, a 16-year-old who has been home-schooled all her life by her parents while they were working in Africa. Now back in the states and entering public school for the first time, she’s clueless about pop culture, fashion, and the way teenage girls treat each other.
A couple of outsiders—the dressed-in-all-anti-fashion-black Janis (Lizzy Caplan) and the “almost too gay to function” Damian (Daniel Franzese)—are the first to give Cady the scoop on how the school works. She learns that one group in particular, The Plastics, are somehow the most popular and least liked girls in school.
When The Plastics take an interest in Cady, Janis urges her to get to know them so she can report back on what goes on inside their twisted world. Thus, Cady finds herself hanging out with the all-controlling Regina (Rachel McAdams), the needy Gretchen (Lacey Chabert), and the ditzy Karen (Amanda Seyfried).
But Cady is torn. Part of her just wants to friends with Janis and Damien and join the Mathletes club sponsored by her favorite teacher Ms. Norbury (“Saturday Night Live’s” Tina Fey, who also wrote the film). But another part of her is really starting to dig the popularity and cool fashion sense that come with being one of the shallow and mean Plastics.
However, when Regina betrays Cady over a popular guy they both like, Cady makes the choice to take revenge using the same mean tactics the Plastics use on everyone else in school. Step by step, she sets out to ruin Regina’s life.
The Verdict
After reading an article and book by Rosalind Wiseman about the mean world of teenage girls, Tina Fey, head writer for “SNL,” got the idea for a fictional movie about how teen girls treat each other. And the movie gains a little depth from actually being about something more than just gross-out humor or princess fantasies.
By the time the credits roll, “Mean Girls” feels like a John Hughes film (“Sixteen Candles,” “Breakfast Club,” “Pretty in Pink,” “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”) if it were made by the team at “Saturday Night Live” (which it was). The result is a mixed bag. On one hand, there’s a kind of honesty about the joys and pain of high school relationships. All of the characters are shown with good and bad qualities—even the “mean girls.”
On the other hand, there’s that whole “SNL” sense of humor, which often depends on having people do weird or really crude things in hopes of shocking a laugh out of the audience.
To be honest, the film wasn’t really working for me until the last third, when it got a lot funnier. Maybe it’s because that’s when the characters graduate from being stock high school stereotypes into individuals we can actually care about. Suddenly, the humor was coming from the story and the people—not just the crude gags or quirky tone.
The dialog here is snappier than in most teen girl films. (E.g., “I love seeing teachers outside of school; it’s like seeing a dog walk on its hind legs.”) And the cast—mostly given three-dimensional characters to inhabit—all do pretty good work. The ending of the movie does leave you with some laughs, as well as a good feeling about the story.
However, “Mean Girls” felt really crude for a movie about teenagers in high school. It’s not “American Pie” crude, but it seems to go beyond the norm for a story aimed at 12-15 year old girls. There’s lots of harsh language; Cady and the other plastics wear tight and revealing clothing that shows off a lot of their bodies; students make out in several scenes; one of the Mathletes is a DJ who raps about sexual stuff; and there’s lots of talk about body parts and body functions.
Worldview
Overall the movie has a pretty positive message, but it starts out in the first two minutes with a slam on home-schoolers that really bugged me. In a voice-over, Cady explains that she hasn’t been home-schooled because she’s a freak (cue the shot of a little girl spelling an impossible word at a spelling bee) or because she’s a religious nut (cue the shot of a bunch of backwoods-looking kids with one saying something like “on the third day God created the Remington bolt-action rifle for killing dinosaurs and ho-mo-sex-uals”).
Ugh. What a cheap shot for a movie that ends up saying that we should avoid being mean to each other and learn to be confident in who we are, instead. It turns out that Tina Fey is just as mean as her characters. I hope she someday has a chance to feel bad about that after spending a little time with a few of the growing millions of cool home-schooled kids out there.
However, the movie ends up in a more positive place. Instead of celebrating the mean things the girls do to each other as some films would, “Mean Girls” actually makes a great point. First, almost everyone has been gossiped about or treated meanly—and almost everyone has done the same thing to someone else. And that stinks.
Fey’s script suggests instead that girls should learn to do two things: One, talk with friends about how they’re feeling instead of looking for ways to lash out when they’re hurting. Two, learn to be happy with who you are so you don’t need to prove something to people who don’t seem to like you.
For Christians, the Bible takes an even stronger stand. First, gossip and slander are just plain wrong. All the time. Period. Talking behind people’s backs isn’t just a bad idea. It’s sin.
Two, God said that Christians should stand out in the world for how they treat other people. Paul wrote that we should be kind and ready to forgive, because we know we’ve been forgiven for so much (Ephesians 4:32). And Jesus said something even crazier—that we should pray for people that hurt us and do kind things to people who treat us badly (Matthew 5:44).
In a high school world of mean girls, the girl (or guy) who lives like that is going to get noticed. Often, she’ll eventually get a chance to explain that the ability to love that way comes from following a Savior who loved us so much He died for us.
Discussion Questions
• Are you a fan of Lindsay Lohan? Where does she rank for you in the crowd of teen actresses making movies now?
• If you’re a teen girl, did you relate to the way the girls in this movie treated each other? Why or why not?
• Have you been treated in a mean way and/or gossiped about by people you thought were friends?
• Have you ever done that same thing to other people?
• Do you know people in your school or in your life who stand out because they choose to show kindness and forgive people who treat them badly?
• Is there someone in your life you’ve been mean to that you need to make things right with? What’s stopping you?
Let us know what you thought of this review!
