Originally published to 8 News Now on January 10, 2023.

Mean Girls is a musical. There. It’s said. The advertisements and trailers for the 2024 remake of Mean Girls should have said it first, but this is not a review of marketing choices, so let’s move on.

An adaptation of the 2017 stage musical of the same name, which itself is an adaptation of the classic 2004 movie starring then-17-year-old Lindsay Lohan, which was an adaptation of 2002’s Queen Bees and Wannabes, a book written by author Rosalind Wiseman, Mean Girls is a story that has been told many times through many mediums. This time, the cautionary tale is told through the eyes of Gen Z.

Angourie Rice makes up for her lack of vocal prowess with likability and earnestness. Indeed, Rice’s portrayal of Cady Heron is comparable favorably to Lohan’s, a compliment to be sure. Other standouts who build on the foundation built by original cast members include Reneé Rapp, who plays a terrifying Regina George, and Jaquel Spivey, a blast as Damian Hubbard. Most other actors maintain the status quo but do little to add to the legendary characters we met two decades ago.

Fans of the stage show will find plenty of familiarity here. However, the filmmakers take an interesting angle of a musical adaptation. Mean Girls, the 2024 movie musical, loses more than half of the songs from its Broadway counterpart, and those that transitioned from the stage show to the film have been transformed into 2020s-era pop songs. Mean Girls finds mixed results with this strategy. It seems the filmmakers want to make every song sound as if it could be a hit single. While some, like Meet The Plastics, A Cautionary Tale, and Stupid With Love, work well in the pop style, others, like Apex Predator, Revenge Party, and I See Stars, mostly lose their punches of energy or emotion.

Transitions between the film’s fantastical “musical” world, which includes the North Shore High School student body performing choreography and singing, and the “real world” can be muddled as the film plays out. However, viewers will likely not care what is “real” and what is not, as what is seen on screen is engaging enough to carry the viewer along. This isn’t a cringe-worthy musical; if the viewer is on board from the start, they will likely stay that way.

Mostly free of reliance on its audience’s nostalgia, Mean Girls largely converts successfully from a Millennial icon to a Gen Z offering. Whether or not the younger generation will see themselves in this version of a nearly quarter-century-old story, cementing it as a timeless tale destined to be retold again and again (a la A Star Is Born), is yet to be determined. However, the filmmakers’ efforts in 2024’s version of Mean Girls have given it enough of a chance to do just that.