The memory of 'Mean Girls' that in the new film takes on another meaning

 

Mean Girls marked a before and after in high school cinema. It's not that it invented anything, but its freshness in addressing adolescent stereotypes through an ingenious script, comic points that were recorded for posterity or a charismatic cast led by Lindsay Lohan and Rachel McAdams , made it an unrepeatable classic. of comedy.

You just have to see how established it has been in popular culture since its premiere in 2004, how much the teenage generation that enjoyed it still lives surrendered to “pink Wednesdays” or phrases like “It's so fetch!” and that it is almost impossible to walk around the internet without finding some reference, meme or phrase to the film. Therefore, with the announcement of a new version for 2024, it was difficult to imagine a product that emulated these sensations .

Making a teenage title today and adapting it to a new youth audience was going to bring with it the modification of its original essence . Basically, because the objective of Paramount Pictures, the producer behind Mean Girls , was to bring this story to new viewers and repeat the success of yesteryear, not so much to focus on nostalgia to attract the public cloistered in the film of yesteryear and deliver a product with nothing. new to offer.

Therefore, it was easy to think that the new adaptation would have every chance of disturbing the good memory that many of us have of the 2000s classic, with changes that would squeak at us and make us put our hands on our heads because they were not directed towards our generation and break the image of the original film. But this has not been the case, because the memory of the Mean Girls of Lindsay Lohan, Rachel McAdams or Amanda Seyfreid keeps it intact. In fact, he uses it actively and takes it towards new meanings that make this new film another unforgettable experience.

A musical approach that makes a difference

To begin with, say that this Mean Girls is not a remake of the 2004 film, rather an adaptation of the musical that brought this story to the Broadway stage between 2018 and 2020 . Although during the promotion they have tried to hide it, the songs are the driving element of the plot, but yes, the story remains the same, with all the key moments of the original present and its new protagonists willing to emulate 100% to the original characters.

We once again find ourselves before the innocent Cady Heron, who upon arriving at a high school in the United States after living in Africa will come face to face with the social hierarchy of the place, where Regina George and her group of friends known as “The Plastics” monopolize all the popularity and influence. In each scene, there is an evident effort to repeat to the letter the schemes that worked in the past , but not through a literal copy, rather playing with the spectacularity of musical numbers and adding touches of humor for generation Z while at the same time faithful to the public's memory of 2004.

The key to making this point work is in its cast, in performers who emulate all the charisma and tics of the characters from the original film while giving them their personal essence , focused on conquering new viewers. It is inevitable to see Lindsay Lohan and Rachel McAdams in each of the actions of Angourie Rice and Renée Rapp, the new Cady and Regina ready to take care of even the smallest detail of what made these roles stand out two decades ago. However, they are still youthful personalities who take the protagonists to their terrain, to phrases or actions that could seem foreign to those of us who are more advanced in age and make us disconnect. But the balance they achieve is perfect.

Nostalgia reinterpreted

Watching Mean Girls , I couldn't stop thinking about how much I enjoyed details that in other current teen films took me out of the action. For example, when I recently saw Bottoms , the acclaimed 2023 high school comedy, I felt very out of place trying to understand its strengths and humor, which everyone raved about and barely made me smile. But here, thanks to relying on our nostalgic memory and reinterpreting it towards these new terrains, it was frankly easy to get in line with the cinematographic feast that this musical offers.

In short, I think that this new youth comedy is committed like few others to generational unity, it celebrates it in a big way through its songs and choreography, it gives us another great teenage film and manages to give off the same freshness with which Mean Girls conquered us in the past. Now, every time we think about this classic, it will not only come to mind how iconic Lohan or McAdams were, since the feast of fun and music of this new adaptation will also be engraved in our memory. A complementary product to the 2004 film that only enhances this already mythical high school story.