By JADYN IBY
Arts Editor
Mean Girls (2024) the musical, premiered in theaters on Jan. 12, getting a wide variety of good and bad reviews.
Many people had much to say about the new Mean Girls musical as well as the actress Reneè Rapp, who plays Regina George in this remake.
“I really enjoyed the movie even though I think that the original was better. It was still so much fun to watch and I overall really enjoyed it,” said Sofia Elsherif, ‘27, in a text message.
This new Mean Girls movie was mostly based off of the musical rather than the original movie that came out in 2004.
In comparison with the 2004 movie there were a lot of similarities, but also differences.
In this new movie, the cast is more inclusive. We see a lot of the characters look much different from the original actors/actresses in the movie. They also make it a very Gen-Z film by including scenes with famous apps such as TikTok and also including newer models of phones such as iPhones, rather than flip phones or BlackBerry’s. The way they connected the modern world to the movie but also kept a lot of the original dialogue and famous scenes are what I really enjoyed about this film.
When looking at the plot and the climax in this new musical version of Mean Girls, I found that they were pretty much the same as the original. However, after Regina George (Reneè Rapp) gets hit by the bus in the musical and they are at the spring fling, Regina says she actually likes Cady and Cady ends up apologizing to Regina. This is a part of the movie that the directors cut out in the 2004 version, which I thought was an important key factor. I like that the directors added the part into this new Mean Girls movie, it shows the character development between and of both Regina George and Cady Heron.
In the original Mean Girls movie also, the directors had Cady Heron narrating the film, however in this new film they have the story told through Janis and Damian. Personally, I thought it was better that they had Janis and Damian narrating, it brought to light a different perspective of the characters and the scenes. Additionally, Janis and Damian addressed the audience at certain points throughout the movie, unlike the 2004 version. I think that this choice made the movie a little more corny than the original version.
If you do not like musicals, then this is not a movie you would want to watch. However, if you are any kind of a theater person or just like musicals in general, I would strongly recommend this movie.
The directors for this new musical version of Mean Girls took both parts from the 2004 movie and also incorporated some of the musical numbers from the musical version. This combination of both the musical and the original movie are what made this movie so great in my eyes. It’s got a bit of everything for everyone.
