Flashback: Read the original 'Mean Girls' review
Today marks the 10th anniversary of Mean Girls.
"Fetch" still hasn't happened, but the comedy has endured as a pitch-perfect portrayal of the universal absurdities of high school.
Could we have predicted the film's cult success? Could we have known that Tina Fey and Amy Poehler would skyrocket beyond their SNL fame, or that scarlet-haired starlet Lindsay Lohan was teetering on a decade-long downward spiral?
It's not like we have ESPN or anything.
So, flash back to April 30, 2004, when USA TODAY's Mike Clark likened Mean Girls to Clueless and claimed it as Lorne Michaels' "best since 1992's Wayne's World." Remember a world before the Plastics. Does his review, written before the phenomenon began, stand the test of time?
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Mean Girls (*** out of four, rated PG-13) has the same fancifully dead-on tone as the 1995 high-school comedy Clueless without the sweetness because, hey, these snits are mean.
Grind these shrews down, play on their insecurities and make them suffer spinal injuries. But wait — we're getting ahead of a story inspired by Rosalind Wiseman's non-fiction book Queen Bees and Wannabes: Helping Your Daughter Survive Cliques, Gossip, Boyfriends and Other Realities of Adolescence (which pretty well hits the key plot elements).
Then again, how much help are parents giving when our heroine's dad (like his wife, an Africa-based zoologist) is so unattuned to American mores that he doesn't know that "grounded" means not being allowed to leave home?
This is OK, because new girl Cady (Lindsay Lohan) proves resourceful enough to deal with instant adversaries, with assistance from two outcast pals (gay male, freak female) she meets on Day 1 of school. But attractive Cady is co-opted by the school-ruling "Plastics," whom she had set out to combat, once they allow her into a social circle whose own members backbite each other.
Funniest of the Plastics is the queen bee (Regina) played by Rachel McAdams, who has past credits like Shotgun Love Dolls and The Hot Chick on her resume. McAdams has both the blond looks and comic flair to make a direct hit as a high school villainess who, on Cady's recommendation, starts munching miracle diet pills. Too bad that in reality they're what the school's football players ingest to beef themselves up.
Girls gets a key boost from the supporting characterizations, which include prize turns from current and former Saturday Night Live players: Tina Fey (the movie's screenwriter) as a recently divorced and now sexually frustrated teacher; Tim Meadows as a school principal with carpal tunnel syndrome; and Amy Poehler as Regina's ditzy mother, who still dresses and acts like the 18-year-old she longs to be.
And although producer Lorne Michaels' big-screen filmography is enough to get every cinephile on a Great Books program (remember Tommy Boy and A Night at the Roxbury?), this time his movie and SNL-caliber laughs aren't mutually exclusive.
Girls, which gets funnier as it goes, is his best since 1992's Wayne's World and a sparky follow-up for Lohan and director Mark Waters to last year's PG-rated Freaky Friday. But this time, the tone is a long way from Disney, even if both movies are alike in having titles that quickly sum up their comic sensibilities and suggest promise that's delivered.