Mean Girls (2004)

Theatrical Poster

Comedy and Chick Flicks films are very usual to us. Slapsticks are cliché and usually used to make people laugh but the movie Mean Girls, a 2004 American teen comedy-drama film, is aspiring to be different. With their wit and sarcastic approach, in my opinion, I believe it is one of the greatest films in their genre.


The story starts from a 16 year-old homeschooled girl named Cady Heron (Lindsay Lohan). Together with her parents, they went back to US after living in Africa for 12 years. There, she has to go to a public school and has difficulty adjusting. She then met Janis (Lizzy Caplan) and Damien (Daniel Franzese) and was introduced to different types of “groups” or cliques in their school. Cady was told to avoid the most famous group called “The Plastics” with Regina George (Rachel McAdams) as the Queen Bee, Gretchen Wieners (Lacey Chabert) as the one who knows everybody’s business and Karen Smith (Amanda Seyfried) as the “one of the dumbest girl” but she attracted their attention and they became interested on her. She was then considered as the newest member of the group. Janis took it as a way to seek revenge to Regina.


With Janis’ plan, Cady is to join the Plastics and spy on the things that they say and do. They went to the mall after class and then to Regina’s house where she found about the “Burn Book” where they put mean things about all the girls in their school and some teachers. She also had a massive crush to Aaron Samuels (Jonathan Bennett) who unfortunately was Regina’s ex-boyfriend. Cady was invited by Aaron to a Halloween Costume Party where Regina backstabbed Cady by telling Aaron some mean things about her. Regina then manages to get Aaron back. Cady walked out and went to Janis’ and Damien’s place where they planned to take avenge to what Regina has done. They were to destroy and cut all of Regina’s “resources” by making Regina and Aaron separate, ruin her body and turning Regina’s friends to be against her. They did some mean tricks which seemed to be unsuccessful.

The "Burn Book"

After some unsuccessful tries, they then succeed in making Aaron and Regina separate when Cady told Aaron that Regina was cheating on him. They also made Regina ate chocolate bars which can make someone gain weight and made Gretchen crack the secrets by making her feel like Regina was mad at her. Cady also realized that in order to get Aaron notice her, she has to “really commit” by failing her Calculus subject on purpose so that Aaron could tutor her. Without her knowing, she is slowly becoming a real mean girl and somewhat forgetting about Janis and Damien.

Regina then found out what Cady was doing and decided to take revenge by putting her picture and wrote mean things about herself in the Burn Book. Regina gave it to their principal and it made her look like she was a victim. Cady, Gretchen and Karen were the only girls that were not in the book and were called to the principal’s office, meanwhile, Regina had copies of the pages of the book and scattered it on the hallways and a riot between all the girls had started.

The girls were then gathered in the gymnasium and an activity led by the Math Teacher, Ms. Norbury (Tina Fey) was made. The girls realized that all of them are guilty of backstabbing and hurting other people’s feelings. One by one, they are to say sorry for the things that they have done. Janis then revealed the truth about Cady and their plan of sabotaging her. Regina walked out of rage and Cady followed her telling Regina that she was sorry. Accidentally as they were talking, Regina got hit by a bus and luckily survived. Rumors spread that Cady intentionally pushed Regina in front of a bus.

Cady then took all the blame and responsibility by saying that she was the one who wrote the Burn Book. She “sucked the poisoned out” by apologizing to the people that she hurt like Ms. Norbury. Ms. Norbury then asked her to join the Mathletes in exchange of what she has done. As she was competing, she was saying mean things inside her mind about the girl on the other group but realized that making fun of the girl won’t stop her from beating Cady and there she regained her focus and was able to win the competition.

They were able to go back to their school for the Spring Fling Dance and Cady was announced as the Spring Fling Queen. She then had a speech about the things that she learned from her mistakes. She broke the crown into pieces and gave it to the girls in the dance. Cady then made up with Janis and Damien, Aaron and the plastics.

At the end, the plastics broke up and had a new life on their own. Aaron went to college, Janis had a relationship with Kevin Gnapoor, captain of the Mathletes, and had their lives and the “Girl World” in peace.

Lindsay Lohan’s acting was very good because she gave justice to the character that she’s portraying. It was exactly how I am imagining “Cady Heron” should be but Rachel McAdams stood out for me because she convinced me with her acting skills that she is a very mean girl. She did what a “fabulous but evil” should be.

As much as I love their characters, I think Lizzy Caplan and Daniel Franzese kind of lack in justifying their roles. It was not so smooth and it felt somewhat scripted.

By the Formalist Film Theory, the scripts thrown written by Tina Fey were very funny, sarcastic and fresh. It has a very youthful yet witty taste. The musical scoring is great for it matches what the scene was asking. Video editing was smooth and continuous. I got some problems and noticed that the film lacked to establish shots. The mall, Cady’s house and the school were not established. I remember getting to the point where I got confused if it was Cady’s house or not.

The film directed by Mark Waters was based on Rosalind Wiseman's Queen Bees and Wannabes, but Tina Fey, who played as the Math teacher Ms. Norbury, created an “overarching plot” since she felt that it was lacking some. 

A lot of lessons could be learned from watching the movie. From small family problems of lacking communication (due to Cady’s attitude where she became a real mean girl) to being a normal person that should be sensitive to the people around her. Especially learning that making fun of other people will never help us to be successful and instead of looking at other people’s flaws, we should focus on more important things like studying, family and friends.

                                                                                                            (c) Angelu Gawaran

Mean Girls (2004) Trailer: