Thanks to Tina Fey, there's a message to Mean Girls, a darkly humorous look at how teen girls socially prey on one another.
By STEVE PERSALL
Published April 29, 2004
[Photo: Paramount Pictures]
Roaming the mall are Lindsay Lohan as Cady, Amanda Seyfried as Karen, Lacey Chabert as Gretchen and Rachel McAdams as Regina in Mean Girls.
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On the surface, Mean Girls is a movie that looks like a lot of movies it isn't. Filled with teenage drama queens, produced by Saturday Night Live guru Lorne Michaels and starring several of that show's cast members, Mean Girls appears primed for disaster. Tina Fey won't allow that to happen.
Fey isn't a household name, yet she's the main reason why SNL has any life left at all. There isn't a sharper mind writing for network television or many performers who can deliver such deliciously barbed lines as well as Fey has co-anchoring SNL's "Weekend Update" segment. She comes across as someone who has heard all the show biz bull, endured all the cliches and can't wait to deflate those who think they can get away with dishing out such dreck, and those who gobble it up.
Now Fey has written a movie with the same attitude. Mean Girls probably isn't a generation-defining film such as Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Heathers or Clueless. In fact, today's teenagers may require growing up a bit to understand Fey's understated needling of high school culture. What looks cool or nerdy, isn't. Everything is a rite of passage, even the petty stuff, unlike other adolescent comedies that irresponsibly convince young viewers that, yes, this is all there is.
The result is a minor movie with major lessons in campus tolerance, and consequences for those who don't agree. If that doesn't sound funny, don't worry. Mean Girls contains more than its share of recognition laughs for students, teachers and parents - all of whom take turns as targets of the humor. Most teen movies pander to adolescents. Mean Girls sees the entire high school process, on screen and in hallways, as farcical.
Lindsay Lohan, who starred in a few of those teen flicks Fey skewers, plays Cady Heron, a formerly home-schooled girl transferring from Africa, so her outsider status is doubly whammied. Her story is essentially one we've seen before: Cady makes friends with other outsiders, gets seduced by the dark side of popularity, then unites everyone at a school dance.
Yet when Cady starts making her conciliatory remarks, her principal (Tim Meadows) informs her that speeches are irregular under such circumstances. Well, of course they are, but too many teen flicks use them as easy wrap-ups. Fey allows Cady her cliche moment while at the same time poking fun at the movies encouraging her to do so. That's only one example of when Mean Girls gives us our cake, chews it for us, and opens its mouth to demonstrate how silly the process is.
Mean Girls is also remarkably diverse, allowing juicy moments for cliquish jocks, Asian-Americans, gays, Goths, even bookish "mathletes." A "burn book" in which Cady's group - called the Plastics because they're so phony - writes nasty things about classmates and teachers, becomes the fulcrum of a neat last act when the backstabbing is exposed.
Fey also detours into nifty absurdities that would suit Saturday Night Live's format. Cady's life in Africa enables her to imagine a shopping mall fountain as a beastly watering hole, and what she'd like to do to Plastics monarch Regina George (Rachel McAdams). A group therapy session and a Mathletes competition are funny. Regina's comeuppance is a sick touch that, like everything else in the movie, turns out rather sunny.
That's a tough act that works because Fey is the only screenwriter here, while so many comedies employ multiple writers to punch up jokes at the expense of story and characters. If you've seen Fey on SNL, it's easy to imagine her delivering each line. Mean Girls is only the tip of the iceberg of what she's capable of doing.
Mean Girls
Grade: B-plus
Director: Mark Waters
Cast: Lindsay Lohan, Rachel McAdams, Lizzy Caplan, Amanda Seyfried, Daniel Franzese, Lacey Chabert, Tina Fey, Tim Meadows, Ana Gasteyer, Amy Poehler, Jonathan Bennett, Rajiv Surendra
Screenplay: Tina Fey, based on the book Queen Bees and Wannabes by Rosalind Wiseman
Rating: PG-13; sexual content, profanity, teen partying
