Mean Girls: B+
BY PATRICIA DRAZNIN
MEAN GIRLS HITS US right between the eyes with the cruelty of
suburban high school culture, which is just as it’s been for decades
but a little meaner. The poignant “dramedy” registers halfway between Clueless—Amy Heckerling’s snappy comedy about Beverly Hills High
School—and Thirteen, last year’s disturbing drama about adolescent
peer pressure in Los Angeles.
Inspired by Rosalind Wiseman’s parenting guide Queen
Bees and Wannabes: Helping Your Daughter Survive Cliques, Gossip, Boyfriends,
and Other Realities of Adolescence, Tina Fey of Saturday Night Live delivers a tight script,
packing laughter and punch and the message of female inhumanity.
Mean Girls showcases the lovely Lindsay Lohan (Freaky
Friday) as young
Cady, who has returned from Africa where her anthropologist parents
were working. Africa’s jungles are Disneyland compared with the horrors
of American high school. And Tina Fey shrewdly captures the comparison
by shifting to animal observation scenes of teenagers competing for attention
and fighting for mates.
The ferocious school cliques are as sharply defined as the caste system.
Cady first befriends two art students. But then she encounters “The
Plastics,” consisting of a svelte blond queen and her two slaves,
who allow Cady to join their lunch table and become their “friend.” Following
the lead of her new peers, the benign Cady slides into nasty survival
mode of “every woman for herself,” where friends gossip, shun,
and betray each other and conjure up venomous schemes for their own gain.
You’ll laugh, and then you’ll gasp.
Thanks to a well-directed cast and a good script, the acting is smooth
and the delivery sharp, with few sagging moments. And most of all, the
film’s haunting message will follow you home. If we ever wonder
why “mean” prevails in the adult world, we need only observe
where it begins, which is probably preschool.
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