Review: Mean Girls (12A)

4:15pm Thursday 17th June 2004

Is the female of the species more deadly than the male? Certainly, according to Mean Girls.

This movie is an adaptation of the 'high school handbook' Queen Bees and Wannabes: Helping Your Daughter Survive Cliques, Gossip, Boyfriends & Other Realities of Adolescence by Tina Fey (of the cult comedy show Saturday Night Live).

Mean Girls follows Cady Heron (played by hip teenage starlet Lindsay Lohan) as she arrives in Chicago from Africa and is struck by the difference between the straightforward law of the jungle and the more complex social workings of North Shore High School.

A-list clique The Plastics rule groups like the The Asian Nerds, The Burn Outs and The Mathletes with catty intimidation and misuse of trust. The chirpy and scholarly Cady, being the sort of girl who wants to take math because it is the same in every country, is naive to all this.

When queen bitch Regina (Rachel McAdams) asks Cady to join The Plastics as a kind of after-school project for the mini-skirted and surgically-enhanced set, she agrees; partly so that she can act as a spy on behalf of new best friend and witty Art Freak member, Janis (Lizzy Caplan).

As the line between Cady's true personality and her Plastic persona is blurred, she becomes victim to The Plastics' meanness.

Mean Girls works on the same level as high school satires Heathers and Clueless, being particularly good at incidental observations, which makes for a fun and satisfying black comedy.

Editor's choice