Mean Girls

In the 1980s, writer-director John Hughes set the template for today's teen movie: take a couple of geeks, mix them in with a jock or two, throw in a spoiled princess and her gaggle of followers, be sure to include a misfit for good measure, sit back, and watch the drama unfold. Few have so expertly rendered the intricacies of the high school caste system, and in doing so, Hughes carved a place for himself (or more accurately, his characters and his words) in the pop cultural landscape that remains unrivalled to this day. (A fun experiment: try scanning any high school yearbook from the past fifteen years and see how many people have quoted Ferris Bueller's immortal line, "Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.")

This does not, however, mean others have not tried for their own place in the teen movie canon. The closest and, arguably, best attempt was Clueless (1995), a breezy adaptation of Jane Austen's Emma by Amy Heckerling, the director who had helped turn Sean Penn's Spiccoli into the stuff of high school legend in Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1983). A spate of lesser movies followed, including She's All That (1999), Can't Hardly Wait (1998), and Never Been Kissed (1999), but none seem to have been embraced in quite the same way as Sixteen Candles (1984), The Breakfast Club (1985), and Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986).

With Mean Girls (2004), Saturday Night Live writer and Weekend Update co-anchor Tina Fey puts her own spin on high school life, taking Rosalind Wiseman's non-fiction study Queen Bees and Wannabes: Helping Your Daughter Survive Cliques, Gossip, Boyfriends, and Other Realities of Adolescence as her source material. Whereas Hughes's movies generally revolved around a simple girl-wants-boy-who-is-socially-unattainable story (or vice versa), in Mean Girls, romance takes a backseat to an examination of the notoriously cliquey nature of American high schools.

Lest this sound overly obtuse, the story is framed around 16-year old Cady Heron (Lindsay Lohan), a recent transplant to the Chicago suburbs (which, perhaps not coincidentally, was also Hughes's stomping grounds) from Africa, where she was raised and home-schooled by her zoologist parents. Lacking any familiarity with pop culture, Cady initially finds herself at sea amongst the "cool Asians, sexually-active band geeks, preps," and the myriad other social groups delineated to her by two fellow outsiders, chubby, effeminate Damien (Daniel Franzese) and hard-edged punk Janis (Lizzy Caplan). Cady's misfit status is, however, short-lived, for her physical attractiveness soon catches the eye of the popular girls, a.k.a. The Plastics, led by the imperious blonde Regina George (Rachel McAdams).

Despite their obvious cattiness, The Plastics dominate the school social order, and are both feared and revered by those around them. Although Cady regards them with a healthy degree of suspicion, even going so far as to agree to spy on them for Janis, she all-too-easily becomes sucked into their world. Trading her baggy shirts and khakis for revealing tops and miniskirts, it doesn't take long before Cady is strutting down the high school corridors like she owns them. However, trouble arises when she sets her sights on hunky Aaron Samuels (Jonathan Bennett), who also happens to be Regina's ex-boyfriend. What ensues is a melee of backstabbing and vicious gossip, engineered by both Cady and Regina to bring the other one down.

While Mean Girls more or less succeeds in shedding light on the often vicious interactions between teenage girls, it is less effective as a teen comedy. Fey's Saturday Night Live origins are readily apparent throughout the script, resulting in a lack of coherency. For instance, broad jokes that are sure to elicit a laugh (e.g. a skinny math nerd's obsession with being a rapper) are often put forth despite not fitting into the larger context of the film. Moreover, Cady's continuing infatuation with Aaron (despite his willingness to date shallow Regina) makes little sense given the movie's ostensible scorn for The Plastics' values and the importance placed on being true to one's self. Despite its best efforts to capture the teen zeitgeist, Mean Girls ultimately feels forced, its ending nowhere near as emotionally satisfying as the heartfelt conclusions of Sixteen Candles, Pretty in Pink, The Breakfast Club, or Some Kind of Wonderful. Perhaps next time Fey should hire Hughes as her director.