Mean Girls
review by
Cynthia Fuchs, 21 May 2004
New Meat
I'm glad I'm not in the
Senate and I'm glad I don't have to vote on what the right thing
is to do in Iraq. Because I think I would be known as a waffler.
--Tina Fey, New York Times Magazine (25 April 2004)
When Cady (Lindsay Lohan) attends
her first day of high school, she's shaken to see just how strictly
the other kids adhere to their habits. This leads to one of Mean
Girls' repeated metaphors: as she's spent her childhood being
home-schooled by her anthropologist parents in Africa, Cady
envisions her new classmates as inhabitants of a "wild" habitat.
Under her narration, they turn into subjects in a Discovery Channel
special, scampering, growling, and pouncing, as if scrapping for
access to the water hole.
The Chicago burbs, it turns out,
are not so different from Cady's previous experience. Still, her
ability to read social signs is somewhat less acute than she once
assumed. Luckily, she's soon adopted by fellow mavericks, lesbian
goth Janis (Lizzy Caplin) and flamingly gay Damian (Daniel Franzese).
They helpfully draw her a virtual map of the cafeteria terrain,
pointing out the "Asian nerds," the "Varsity Jocks," the "Cool
Asians," the "Unfriendly Black Hotties." Looking out over her new
environment, Cady wonders whether she will ever fit in. Looking with
her, you can only hope she doesn't.
Most aggressive among the packs, à
la the Heathers, are the Plastics, comprised of Queen Bee Regina
(Rachel McAdams) and her wannabe minions Gretchen (Lacey Chabert)
and Karen (Amanda Seyfried). When Regina takes a liking to "new
meat" Cady, Janis and Damien send her forth on a mission, to
infiltrate the enemy pod and return with information. Little does
Cady know that Janis has a personal history with Regina ("She's a
life ruiner!" hisses Janis), or that she will develop her own
personal investment, in the form of a crush on Aaron (Jonathan
Bennett), Regina's ex. Of course, as soon as Regina perceives this
interest, Uber-mean-girl immediately re-possesses Aaron, apparently
so malleable before her wiles that you might wonder just what Cady
sees in him. (And then the camera grants a lingering, Cady's point
of view shot of his beautiful face, and you know what's set her
young heart a-quiver.)
As Mean Girls is fond of
pointing out, high school mating rituals resemble those of the
African savannah. Cady's multiple efforts -- to please Damien and
Janis, exact revenge on Regina, and attract Aaron's attention -- are
convoluted and daunting. In Girl World, Cady soon learns, power is
primal and morality is inverted: lying to get what you want is a
time-honored tradition, ensuring a rival's public humiliation a
triumph of social skills. In Girl World, you learn early how to get
what you want: Cady's initiation involves a visit to Regina's home,
where she's shocked to see Regina's younger sister shaking her
skinny little white booty in sync with Kelis' "Milkshake" video.
This performance -- the child acting out an excessively
self-confident, and notably black female, sexuality -- alarms Cady
at first, though she will soon learn how to adorn her own body for
similar display.
In Girl World, Cady learns the
value of sabotage (convincing Regina that a foot cream is a face
cream backfires: "All we've done is make Regina's face smell like a
foot!") and manipulation (pretending to be bad at math, in order to
convince Aaron to tutor her: "All the work is right," observes her
teacher skeptically, "Just the answers are wrong"). "It may look
like I've become a bitch," Cady reassures in voice-over, "But that's
only because I'm acting like a bitch."
Directed by Mark Waters (Lohan's
Freaky Friday director), Tina Fey's script (based on Rosalind
Wiseman's Queen Bees and Wannabes: Helping Your Daughter Survive
Cliques, Gossip, Boyfriends and Other Realities of Adolescence,
a self-help book for mothers, a concept that only exacerbates the
convoluted process of typing teens as objects of study) reveals the
many ways that kids mimic even as they resist "grownup" behaviors.
The girls' phone conversations, arranged in split screens to
showcase their deviousness at any given moment, build to weird
little climaxes, for instance, the discovery of a third party
(another girl) listening in, and so some dire secret has been
revealed.
The girls' increasingly bad
behavior tends to cow adults in the vicinity: Regina's insecure
mother (Amy Poehler) only wants to maintain her youth (which she
sees in a faux connection with her daughter, who overtly resents and
reviles her); math teacher Ms. Norbury (Fey) tries to maintain her
distance (even as she sees that Cady is a math whiz who should put
out for the school team, made up of nerdy boys who'd love to have a
girl along); and principal Mr. Duvall (Tim Meadows) occasionally
takes up a Joe-Clarkish baseball bat in his efforts to maintain a
mostly superficial order. His complete inability to control or even
anticipate anything that happens around him ("The girls have gone
wild!" wails one supposed monitor, as the camera pans absolute chaos
in the hallways) only underlines the film's central point: unhappy,
confused kids grow up to be unhappy, confused adults.
The struggle for Cady, as for
Heathers' Veronica (Wynona Ryder) before her, involves the
discovery of her own decently girlish identity. By the time she
comes to worry about lying to everyone from her parents to her
friends to the deftly ironic Ms. Norbury, Cady's options appear
limited. She's no longer a designing interloper in Girl World, but a
full-fledged member. As per generic conventions, Cady will figure it
out. But this familiar story is helped considerably by the fact that
her figuring is framed by Fey's snarky worldview. In Girl World, as
in any feral environment, "When you get bitten by a snake, you're
supposed to suck the poison out."
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Directed
by:
Mark Waters
Starring:
Lindsay Lohan
Tina Fey
Lizzy Caplan
Rachel McAdams
Lacy Chabert
Daniel Franzese
Tim Meadows
Rajiv Surendra
Written by:
Tina Fey
Rated:
PG-13 - Parents
Strongly Cautioned.
Some material may be
inappropriate for
children under 13.
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