Mean Girls Revived: A Reboot Review
The Reboot
We’re back and better than ever…but instead of covering the land of the Upper East Side and our precious Gossip Girl, this time we’re turning our attention to an arguably more dangerous jungle of teenagers: North Shore High School, and more specifically, “Girl World,” where Regina George and her sidekicks, infamously known as The Plastics, rule the land. After the excitement of watching our favorite characters come back to life with the Gossip Girl remake, we couldn’t have booked our tickets faster to witness the return of “teen royalty,” as icon Damian Leigh would put it. However, what we found was quite different from our expectations, and we’re here to tell you why.
A Musical?
So… all of a sudden, North Shore’s best are all… singers? In the reprisal of the movie, the producers decided to add some of the most popular songs from the Broadway version. However, we’re not sure if we really agree with this decision. While some songs are catchy, adding the music led to the disappearance of a few notable scenes in the original movie. “I can’t go out… *cough cough* I’m sick.” The four-way phone call, probably one of the most iconic scenes ever, was cut for the new movie, along with many others. And the fact that they were ditched and replaced with subpar songs… yeah, that didn’t help either. Now, we know we are being rough on the music, and we did tolerate some songs, including Karen’s Halloween song titled “Sexy,” Cady’s song “Stupid with Love,” and “World Burn” performed by famous singer Reneé Rapp who played Regina. But, at the end of the day, we think it would be best to leave the singing to Mean Girls on Broadway.
“Get In Loser, We’re Going Shopping”
“On Wednesdays, we wear pink.” Honestly, the amount of fashion cues we took as young children (and maybe still take) from Gretchen and Karen was borderline unhealthy. Tuesday nights were often reserved for curating the perfect outfit with hues of rose and coral, and every Halloween, we questioned how we would put together Cady’s bloody bride. Therefore, we anticipated nothing less than the best when it came to costume design. Unfortunately, we were met with efforts to be overly trendy and “current,” resulting in some cringe-worthy looks that we wanted to look away from rather than at. Only some scenes actually included clothing references to the original movie, but we were happy when they did: for example, the Winter Pageant Santa renditions and Cady’s Mathlete varsity jacket. Overall, we think these characters should have put more time into their after-school shopping trips…
Who’s Who?
“She doesn’t even go here!” We all know the iconic Regina, Gretchen, Karen, Cady, Damien, and Janice, but are the new actors deserving of being the most important people at North Shore High School? One character that definitely left her mark positively on this movie was Karen, played by Avantika Vandanapu. In the movie, Avantika seemed to have perfected Karen’s wide-eyed gaze, and she did an amazing job in her song about Halloween, which was our favorite of all (although, as we stated above, we didn’t love the idea of the music). Now onto who else brought back the vibes of the original movie. Ms. Norbury and Principal Duvall?!?! We all know that in the first movie, Principal Duvall was attempting to rizz Ms. Norbury, and they gave us all the happy endings we wanted since they are together in the 2024 film. Another blast from the past came from arguably the most important actor in the first movie, none other than Lindsay Lohan. Her cameo appears during the mathletes competition, where she is the judge. Throughout the scene, she makes some funny references to her original movie; of course, we hear the classic: “the limit does not exist!” While we are more fond of the original cast (we may be biased after watching it 10+ times), many of the new actors did hit the spot.
The Essence
This isn't a Burn Book; we certainly didn’t mean to make it one. It’s hard sometimes when you love something so much, and then the reboot doesn’t turn out to be what you expected—for example, Regina and her Kalteen bars. However, it always seems to work itself out in the end. And while the new Mean Girls wasn’t the same as the original, it captured those battle-like teenage years in all their glory. Okay, maybe it’s a little dramatized—we don’t exactly have a Regina or Karen roaming our halls—but either way, it still entertained us after 20 years and comforted Gen Z-ers all over town. Maybe you won’t watch it more than once, but it certainly warrants at least a trip to the couch for a viewing. Anywho, we hope the rest of your reading is absolutely fetch (and yes, it still works)!
Xoxo,
Your favorite reboot reviewers
