MOVIE REVIEW: Mean Girls (2004) – One of the best

1. General thoughts about Mean Girls movie

Mean Girls was preceded by some similar glamorous-mean movies as Heathers (1988), Cruel Intentions (1999) and Jawbreaker (1999) (tip for those looking for some Mean Girls similar movies). All of these movies are first class cinema creations, each one having its own personal flavor, its uniqueness, but none of them is as eloquent for the 90s – early 2000 generation as Mean Girls.

For those girls born around the year 1990, Mean Girls is probably the best chick flick/ teenage movie / high school / mean girls movie ever. It also became a classic. If you have a passion for movies, then Mean Girls is a must.

2. Plot & Characters

First of all, the movie molds to the world of the real teenage girls in the year 2004. The sleek long hair, with not one single rebel hair, the pinkish makeup, the highly acclaimed French manicure, the mini-skirts – all of these form the dream of the average teenage girl of the 2000s. Even the cars in this movie are the ones dreamed for. But this is not all. The movie also presents other stereotypes so well outlined that it is impossible not to fall in love with them (the first in mind are the gay stereotype – Damian, the rebel-smarty goth Janis Ian, the math-geek Kevin Gnapoor and so on).

The script is full with funny lines. Take a look at one of Janis’s.

Although the movie is very powerful when it comes to the characters, the architecture of the movie relies on stereotypes and not on the actual construction of the individual character. Some background information is provided about the main character of the movie, Cady Heron, just a little about the anti-character Regina George, increasingly less about the other characters of the movie. For example, we don’t know much about Aaron, in fact we know nothing about him except the fact that he isn’t good at math. But this is a good thing, it’s not an error of the scriptwriters. Was the movie to provide more information on Aaron Samuels, it would have become crowded and the more important details could have been eclipsed. But this is not the case, which makes the movie exemplary for the choice in the distribution of the spotlights onto certain characters.

Another thing that makes this movie so special is the fact that we have good and bad characters, sometimes we want someone to win and others to loose, but in the end (in fact, not in the end, but throughout the entire movie) we fall in love with all the characters.

Well, this is where I should talk about Regina (by the way, good name choice because she is obviously a queen). Regina is the true star of the movie and her character is flawlessly constructed. She is beautiful, sexy, rich, smart, sociable and evil. But guess what – everyone loves her because people don’t want to be good, they want, above all, to be like Regina. These things are not actually my interpretation, they are stated bluntly, several times, in the actual movie.

3. The aesthetics of the movie

The story flows coherently, the script is well written, the lines feel natural and well placed, the actors do a great job, the light is well chosen, the colors as well, the editing is perfect and so on. All in all, cinematically speaking, everything is in its right place. The movie is the obvious result of a mature, well versed mind.

Apart from the general well realization of the movie, there are also some specific details which make the movie even more aesthetically pleasing. I have in mind the jungle insertions which remind me of the Lucía Etxebarría’s novel Beatrice and the Heavenly Bodies. Just as Beatrice’s story is followed by meteors, planets and galaxies, Cady’s story is always accompanied with the jungle’s fauna.

This movie is also a very good comedy. There are a lot of types of comedy used in this movie, all of them well chosen (for example I loved the „burning” type of comic used in the name of the clothes store 1-3-5).

4. Soundtrack

There are a bunch of different songs used in this movie and all of them seem to fit perfectly in the general construction of the movie.
The songs also contribute to the light-comic atmosphere of the movie.
The ending song is just perfect.

5. Concluding & other thoughts about Mean Girls movie

An important outcome of Mean Girls is the well known catch phrase „stop trying to make (fetch) happen”. When a movie is able to generate a catch phrase, it means that the movie really spoke to the people’s hearts. In fact there were many catch phrases…