There has been a lot of publicity surrounding SNL head-writer Tina Fey’s first major motion picture script, Mean Girls. And while the script is rife with the hilarious one-liners that Fey delivers weekly from behind her “Weekend Update” desk, it clearly highlights Fey’s major flaw as a writer: originality and plot development. You see, the medium of film is different from SNL in that on SNL you only need to fill 10 minutes, and Mean Girls has a difficult time reaching for the 90 minute mark while keeping it fresh.
That introduction is a little deceiving. While what I said was true, and I stick by my opinion that Mean Girls lacks original plot-department, I am ultimately recommending the movie. Why? Because I laughed my ass off. Mean Girls doesn’t satirize anything new -- movies like The Breakfast Club and many since than have mocked the high school clique scene -- but the dialogue is so surprisingly crisp and witty that I couldn’t help but leave the theatre happy. And that my friends, is called quality entertainment.
Tween Queen Lindsay Lohan (move over Hilary Duff!) follows up her 2003 sleeper hit Freaky Friday (let us all try and forget Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen) by playing Cady Heron, a teenager who has spent her entire life in Africa with her parents and is for the first time stepping through the hallowed threshold oh public high school. Cady’s sweet nature is meet with the all the animosity which has come to stereotype high school life, and on her very first day, she is made to eat her lunch in the bathroom. Soon though, she is accepted by the arty Janis and the “almost too gay to function” Damian. To the surprise of everyone, she is also invited to sit at the lunch table of “The Plastics,” which is the coolest girl’s clique on campus made up of Queen Bee Regina George and her handmaidens Gretchen Wieners and Karen Smith. With the encouragement of Janis and Damian, Cady joins the group in an effort to find out their dirty secrets and expose them. Cady is soon swayed by the world of Louis Veiton and Manolo Blahnik, and is eventually forced to choose between her real friends and the title of “most popular girl in school.”
Yes, the whole “uncool-girl-joins-cool-girls-and-losses-site-of-what-is-real” story has been done, but as the movie progresses, it seems as though the script follows the same developmental plot line. What I mean by this is that the first 2/3 of the script sparkles with the same purity and good intentions that Cady sparkles with in the first 2/3 of the movie, but the final 1/3 of the movie reeks of a “sell-out” attitude as the script presents the audience with an overly Hollywood-ized ending in which everyone is happy. I’m sorry, but happy endings are rare, especially in high school. Fey seems to be trying to establish an inventive twist on the high school film genre by presenting an authentic view of high school life, but Fey never quite reaches her goal as Mean Girls is not an original production. Plots like the one featured in Mean Girls have been seen in countless sitcoms, and the authentic high school view becomes badly distorted during the conclusion. What Fey does achieve though is an abundance of laughter, doing what she does best at SNL: delivering laugh-out-loud one-liners.
Grade: B-
© 2004 Jacob Sproul
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