2024 film “Mean Girls” has a rather complex history just like the recent movie version of “The Color Purple” (1985). It is the movie adaptation of the acclaimed Broadway musical of the same name, which is inspired by the 2004 film of the same name which is based on Rosalind Wiseman’s book “Queen Bees and Wannabes”. Nevertheless, the movie is pretty much same as the 2004 film except some updated details and a bunch of musical numbers, and I enjoyed the overall result to some degree even though I often wondered about the necessity of its existence during my viewing.

As humorously told to us via its opening number, the story is a sort of cautionary tale about your average American high school life. Our young heroine, Cady Heron (Angourie Rice), feels insecure and anxious as beginning her first high school day, and we see how she cannot help but draw attention from many other students as a newly transferred student who has been incidentally homeschooled by her wildlife researcher mother in Africa for years. Not so surprisingly, she eventually befriends two distinguished loners in the school who are also defiantly queer in each own way, and Janis (Auliʻi Cravalho) and Damien (Jaquel Spivey) willingly take her under their wing as informing her a bit about a number of various groups (or tribes, shall we say) in their high school.  

Along with her, we come to learn that the most notable group in the school is a trio of sassy girls: Regina (Reneé Rapp) and the other two girls who have been more or less than her ladies-in-waiting. As the de facto queen bee of the school, Regina surely enjoys her power and influence over many other students, and we accordingly get an amusing musical scene as she sings about how much she enjoys her power and influence.  

Because of some old personal resentment toward Regina, Janis suggests a rather mean plan when Cady happens to draw the attention from Regina and Regina seems willing to make Cady into another underling of hers. While ingratiating herself more with Regina and her group, Cady is going to look for any opportunity to humiliate Reina in public, and Cady agrees to do that because she does not like Regina and her underlings from the beginning.

However, of course, things get become a bit more complicated for Cady due to two reasons. First, as getting closer to Regina and her underlings, she cannot help but feel seduced more and more by their supposedly cool appearance as well as their power. Second, she becomes attracted to a certain hunky student who happens to attend her mathematics class, but, what do you know, it turns out that he was once close to Regina, who will not definitely allow him to get closer to her latest underling.

Therefore, Cady becomes more determined to undermine Regina by any means necessary, and Janis and Damien have no problem with going along with that at all. One of the funniest things in the film is involved with a certain kind of nutrient bar which Cady deliberately recommends to Regina, and we surely get some laugh when the movie delivers an expected punchline moment later in the story. 

Not so surprisingly, things eventually get quite vicious when Regina belatedly comes to realize what Cady is doing behind her back. Reneé Rapp, who already played her character in the Broadway production during 2019-2020, delightfully commands every moment of hers with infectious gusto, and her delicious comic performance is certainly one of the best things in the film just like Rachel McAdams in the 2004 version.

In contrast, Angourie Rice is easily eclipsed by many of her fellow cast members including Rapp. Compared to Lindsay Lohan in the 2004 version (She makes a brief appearance around the end of the film, by the way), Rice is rather colorless in terms of presence and personality, but her earnest acting holds the center as required, and she also handles wells several musical numbers assigned to her character.

Around Rapp and Rice, the movie assembles a bunch of colorful performers who bring some extra humor and personality to the film in one way or another. Auliʻi Cravalho, who has been more notable since her wonderful voice performance in Oscar-nominated Disney animation film “Moana” (2016), fills her supporting character with enough pluck and defiance, and Jaquel Spivey, who has been mainly known for his Tony-nominated performance in Broadway musical “A Strange Loop”, complements Cravalho well as her character’s best friend. While Avantika Vandanapu and Bebe Wood have each own moment as Reina’s two underlings, Jenna Fischer, Tim Meadows, and Tina Fey, who also produced the film and wrote the screenplay as she did in the 2004 film, dutifully fill their respective supporting parts, and you will probably also enjoy the cameo appearance of some other recognizable performers.   

On the whole, “Mean Girls”, which is directed by Samantha Jayne and Arturo Perez Jr., is not totally necessary in my inconsequential opinion, though it is not entirely without fun and entertainment at least. Because I still would rather recommend the 2004 version first, I give the movie only 2.5 stars, but you may enjoy and appreciate its good parts more than I did, and I will not stop you at all if you simply want to spend some free time.