Wednesday 4 November 2015

Mean Girls (2004)

(SPOILER ALERT: DO NOT READ THIS POST IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENS TO HIGH-SCHOOL STUDENT DESPOTS.)

[Now for a bust of a breakthrough movie for a couple of stars whose careers have since seen wildly divergent fortunes.]

Mean Girls (2004) is an American teen comedy film, directed by Mark Waters, starring Lindsay Lohan and Rachel McAdams. The screenplay was written by Tina Fey, who also co-stars.

In the end, high-school queen-bee contender, Lindsay Lohan decides there is more to school life than teen machinations (maybe.)

Recently repatriated to the States after a sheltered upbringing in remote Africa, intelligent but socially naive sixteen year old Lohan is thrown into the deep-end of American teenage life when she attends school for the first time.

Totally unprepared for both the demands of education and teenage (mostly female) social cliques, she is offered a lifeline by a pair of student outcasts, in the form of a map that lays bare the prevailing high school pecking order.

As a result of suffering the unwanted innuendo laden attentions of the boyfriend of its leader, Rachel McAdams, Lohan finds herself unexpectedly welcomed into the circle of girls at the pinnacle of the hierarchy.

Sensing an opportunity for revenge against their principle tormentors, Lohan's outcast friends persuade her to sabotage McAdams's group from within, but in the process Lohan becomes just as superficial and venal as the girls themselves.

However, realizing Lohan's treacherous betrayal, McAdams uses the Hoover-esque dossier she has compiled to frame Lohan as the source of all rumour and scandal against everyone at the school, leading to a complete breakdown in order.

Authority is only restored during an assembly when the plot against the universally derided McAdams is confessed by the students, after which a fleeing and distraught McAdams is run down and almost killed by a school bus.

Atoning for the responsibility she feels, the guilt-ridden Lohan gradually manages to recover her sweet personality and shake off her pariah status.

And after triumphing in an inter-school math competition, is sufficiently rehabilitated to be elected end-of-year dance queen, clearing the way for a new intake of wannabe queen-bees, who she fantasizes will also be hit by a bus.


Much of the comic enjoyment on offer here is, perhaps, more easily appreciated by those, like writer Tina Fey herself, with some age perspective on proceedings. For those still ducking the psychological crossfire raking eleventh grade trenches, Mean Girls can read very much more like its self-help survival guide inspiration. Nevertheless, even if the eventual message is a bit pat, there is more than enough sweet badinage to help the teenage medicine go down.

Source(s):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mean_Girls