Mean Girls (2024) Was Refreshing in Some Ways but Mostly Worse Than the Original

By Zeke Shomler

I wasn’t going to watch the new Mean Girls movie at first. I knew it was a remake of the recent Broadway musical, which wasn’t entirely engrossing. I’d heard about Angourie Rice’s flat singing and awkward camera angles. Honestly, I just don’t watch a lot of movies in theaters in general. But then I saw this TikTok by Glenn DeVar and knew I had to check it out myself.

DeVar claims in his video that the last twenty years have seen much less cultural change than the twenty years before that. He says that the original Mean Girls movie from 2004 shows a drastically different high school environment than the 1984 film Sixteen Candles and that the high school environment of the new Mean Girls is essentially the same as the original. According to him, that’s evidence that “20 years today does not mean the same thing that 20 years meant to [him] when [he] was growing up.”

I could point out several flaws in his argument: he’s trying to compare a remake and an original with two entirely different movies; one’s perception of time changes as we get older; he has no real reference for whether or not the new Mean Girls movie still represents the high school experience since he’s no longer actually in high school. But honestly, what’s even more interesting to me are the ways the new Mean Girls does, in fact, seem quite different from the original, at least to me. While DeVar thinks that “the difference in quality and style is pretty minimal” and it “doesn’t feel like a different era of film,” I disagree.

Regarding quality and style, I saw a big difference between the film's 2004 and 2024 versions. The big one for me is the clothing: the original plastics were true to their rich-girl style, wearing high-quality designer clothes. The new Plastics wear… Shein? I’m not the only one to notice that the clothes in the new movie look cheap and out of touch with real-world trends. The clothes looked much more like a TikTok advertisement than a high school wardrobe, much less the wardrobe of a group of it-girls who love designer clothing. In this era where everything, including clothing, has moved toward low-quality, quick-consumption, disposable, petrochemical products designed not for sustainability but for maximum profit, it definitely shows in the new movie’s costuming.

Speaking of looking like an advertisement, the product placement in Mean Girls was so distracting I felt embarrassed. I hope the producers got a lot of money from e.l.f. Cosmetics, because they not only said the full name and brand of one of their lipsticks out loud, they also prominently displayed the label later. We’re also told that the Mathletes competition is “presented by SeatGeek,” which feels too on the nose. There’s a big difference between commenting on societal trends of ever-present corporate sponsorship and uncritically recreating them. 

The same could be said for the movie’s message about acting like oneself. There’s a strong strain, thematically, against performativity—as Cady herself moves away from her wholesome roots to gain popularity, and Mean Girl Regina sings a whole song called “Someone Gets Hurt” that repeats, “This is a performance / this is all self-defense.” And yet, the movie cuts out a lot of emotional depth from the characters, including much of Cady’s connection to her home in Africa, at the expense of flashy music sequences that do little to move the plot along. Is the movie commenting on the TikTok era's performativity or just playing right into it?

You may have guessed by now that I didn’t like Mean Girls (2024) very much, but I do have to say it was refreshing to have Janis (formerly Janis Ian, turned into Janis ‘Imi’ike) portrayed as an out lesbian. Not all the changes in the last 20 years have been for the worse. While in the original movie, Janis’ alternative style was singled out as proof of *gasp* lesbianism by her fellow high schoolers. The new Janis is out and proud. It partially makes sense because she’s played by the bisexual actress Auli’i Cravalho, but also because many people have thought the original Janis to be queer-coded from the start. Now, instead of having queer identity (perceived or otherwise) as the defining wedge between Janis and Regina, she’s allowed to just be queer without it defining her. I’d say that’s a step forward for sure.

Of course, not everything is roses and sunshine for queer characters since “too gay to function” is still used against Damien in the Burn Book. And I might even go far as to say that Regina could easily have been queer. Even in the original movie, viewers have pointed out that her homophobia seems to stem from self-hatred. Now, Renee Rapp as Regina is even more upfront about the fact that she’s using her relationship with Aaron to advance socially (remember the song about performativity?), and Renee Rapp’s song in the end credits asks directly, “Can a gay girl get an amen?”

All I’m saying is if we were going to give lesbian-coded characters their due in this new movie, it would not have been a stretch to be more direct about Regina’s sexuality. But I can hear the resistance already: that’s too many lesbians in one movie; it’s supposed to be a regular high school movie, not a queer movie; Regina’s relationships with Aaron and Shane prove otherwise. My question is: why can’t we have two queer women characters in the same movie? Is that so much of a barrier to relatability that it’s not feasible in a major remake?

There are many other things about the new movie: it was fun to see Lindsay Lohan, Tina Fey, and Tim Meadows return. Renee Rapp did an amazing job, but Auli’I Cravalho’s performance fell flat. And I won’t even mention Angourie Rice’s acting. 

But this isn’t really intended as a movie review. I’m much more interested in cultural messages and patterns. My final takeaway: the differences between the 2004 and 2024 Mean Girls adaptations show how things have gotten a little bit better regarding social equality over the last twenty years but worse regarding overbearing consumerism. While the movie wasn’t for me, I’m glad I got to watch and analyze it. Although I will say unless you want to argue with me about its themes or see the trends for yourself, this movie is probably not worth spending money on.