The long-awaited ‘Mean Girls’ musical-movie hit theaters on Jan. 12th. A combined adaptation of the iconic 2004 movie and hit Broadway musical of the same name, the film grossed 66.4 million dollars in the U.S. and 92.7 million worldwide. The movie features a cast of vocal powerhouses and teenage heartthrobs.
The storyline follows Cady Heron (Angourie Rice) as she moves from Africa and is thrown into the social environment of high school. Cady navigates through boys, school, and friendship as she figures out where she belongs.
As a fan of both the musical and the movie, I was excited to see how the show would translate from stage to screen after already being amazed by how well it moved from the original. However, I was immensely disappointed. I listened to the album before watching the movie, and my expectations were lowered extremely. Not all the songs were bad, but most were. The actors’ voices are good on their own, but most didn’t blend well together or were too heavily autotuned.
Also, the actors were chosen for roles that didn’t fit them vocally. For example, Bebe Wood, who plays Gretchen Weiners, is amazing and talented, but her voice is too low compared to the original key the musical was written in. Rice’s portrayal of Cady sounded like some of the notes were too high for her to hit. Rice is talented but wasn’t the right choice in casting. The movie itself was okay, but out of the three adaptations, it would be at the bottom of my ranking.
They cut a lot of the best songs and most of the jokes. I understand wanting it to be more appropriate with some of the changes, but I found some of the changes to be unnecessary.
Not everything was bad though. Regina George (Reneé Rapp), Karen Shetty (Avantika Vandanapu), and Janis Imi’ike (Auli’i Cravalho) brought some much-needed talent to the movie. Rapp had already played Regina in the Broadway musical and she did amazing in the movie. She has grown and matured since she first played in 2019, which enhanced her performance even more. Vandanapu embodied her role perfectly and she brought the “dumb blonde” energy that Karen needed. She was so perfect and definitely the funniest element of the movie. Cravalho was the best option for Janis. She had an amazing energy that showed her range as an actor, after playing a Disney princess.
The movie was decent for a musical movie adaptation, but it could have done better if it had stuck closer to the original musical. The actors are still talented, nonetheless, but some of their casting wasn’t the right choice in my opinion. The movie wasn’t my favorite, but I would probably watch it again if I couldn’t find something else.
