Mean Girls (2004)

I really enjoyed this film. I enjoyed it a lot. What’s great about Mean Girls is that it is a smart teen comedy first, and a teen chick comedy second. And not to say I don’t like a good flat-out teen chick comedy, it’s just that there are no good teen chick comedies that don’t have anything else going for it. Sixteen Candles was an honest movie about teenagers before being a teen chick comedy. Mean Girls, which I did find less serious than Sixteen Candles, is basically what would happen if someone let John Hughes and the writers of Arrested Development team up to make a movie, this is what would have happened. John Hughes, as I argue and always will argue, is the greatest teen film director of all time. Arrested Development I consider to be the best TV show that ever aired. I hope you’re catching my drift. Mean Girls is much better than it should be. It features Lindsay Lohan in her break-out role (before she went all…you know, I’m not gonna get into that here) as a girl named Cady who was previously homeschooled in Africa her entire life, until she is enrolled in high school. She immediately is well liked by many people, including the math teacher (one of the funniest women alive, who also wrote the film, Tina Fey) and two friends (Lizzy Caplan, who would later appear in one of the awesomest films ever made Cloverfield, and Daniel Franzese) who she teams up with to bring down The Plastics, a group of ‘queen bees’ at the school (Rachel McAdams, the leader, Amanda Seyfried, the dumb one, and Lacey Chabert, the third one). This is done by getting Cady to join with The Plastics, and then take them down from the inside. And from there are jokes, gags, and something kind of astonishing. Throughout the film, you see that everything has gone too far. And the film shows the consequences of these events that were minor actions in the beginning become disasters by the end. It turns out beautifully. It makes a statement about teenage life. And while I am not in high school nor am I a girl, I cannot vouch for the accuracy of it, but I can say that it is entertaining and a great time. It blends comedy and truthful drama brilliantly, and is just a great film. So if you look at films today and wonder what happened to the teen film, where are the John Hughes quality films of today, here it is.
8.5/10