Teenagers really do get the shaft when it comes to movies. Studios clearly think that anyone in high school is a moron and will see anything with explosions and/or hot young actors.
Partially true as that may be, it's still always refreshing to see a film like Mean Girls, aimed at teens (specifically teenage girls), but not content to simply throw flavor-of-the-moment hotties in designer clothes on the screen, give them a few sappy moments and corny jokes, and call it a day. On the surface, Mean Girls looks like a lot of other mass-produced, focus-group-derived teen trash: It stars "It Girl" Lindsay Lohan as Cady Heron, a high school junior transplanted to suburban Illinois after spending her formative years being homeschooled by her zoologist parents in the African jungle.
Forced to deal with American high school for the first time, Cady's torn between the misfit friends she makes on her first day, bitter Janis (Lizzy Caplan) and gay Damian (Daniel Franzese), and the alpha group Janis and Damian condescendingly term "The Plastics," led by prom queen-to-be Regina (Rachel McAdams). Cady agrees to fake friendship with the Plastics to get dirt on the popular kids for Janis and Damian, but things get complicated when she falls for Aaron (Jonathan Bennett), Regina's ex.
It sounds like typical high school hijinks, and in a way, it is. Lohan plays nearly the same part she did in the recent Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen. The difference is in everything around her, from the script to the direction to the supporting players. Inspired by a non-fiction book on the cutthroat lives of high school girls, the smart, genuinely funny script was penned by Saturday Night Live "Weekend Update" co-anchor and head writer Tina Fey, who also plays Cady's math teacher. Other SNL players and alums show up in supporting roles, from Tim Meadows as the deadpan school principal and Amy Poehler as Regina's painfully hip mother to Ana Gasteyer in a surprisingly warm role as Cady's mom.
While Fey and director Mark Waters, who showed he knew a thing or two about directing teens (and Lindsay Lohan) in the cute but slight Freaky Friday, throw plenty of expected developments the audience's way, they also slightly subvert most of their clichés, and aren't afraid to use the film's PG-13 rating to its fullest to show how brutal teen life can be. Mean Girls is the kind of film that teens actually should see, one which treats them with respect while being wickedly entertaining.