Photo:Jojo Whilden/Paramount
Jojo Whilden/Paramount
Oh, Lindsay, Lindsay, Lindsay! After all these years, your name still lights a flame in the poetical mind — to set those two syllables to rhyme, to music, to anything!
Then again, how deep or rich should a musical ofMean Girlshave to be?
You might think of it as a vehicle that, should you be forced once more to undergo the adolescent nightmare of taking your driver’s test, could be parallel-parked with no sweat.
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In its light-handed way, the originalMean Girlsalso suggested something of Kurt Vonnegut Jr.’s famous observation: “High school is closer to the core of American experience than anything I can think of.”(Election,of course, is the purest film realization of that thought. )
This newMean Girls,though, is more like an SUV that keeps running over the curb and knocking down mailboxes. Admittedly, much of the material is the same, just given glancingly clever updates.
A throwaway line that once hinged on Ladysmith Black Mambazo now hinges on Neil deGrasse Tyson. It got a laugh then, and it gets a laugh now. But modern musical-comedy conventions, or at least the ones imported here from a hit Broadway production, aren’t subtle. Go big, as they say, or go home.
The film culminates in an incident of body-shaming that comes close to sadistic slapstick. The scene isn’t necessarily even meant to be funny (or is it?), but it jars.If anything,Mean Girlsmakes you appreciate the skill that went into creating the bizarre and provocatively primitiveDicks: The Musical.
Jaquel Spivey, Angourie Rice and Auli’i Cravalho.Jojo Whilden/Paramount
Although, thanks to Greta Gerwig’s gestalt-defining movie comedy, we now know that the Mattel doll has philosophical curiosity and depth. You could have called Hannah Arendt “Barbie,” and she might have thanked you. Times reallydochange.
The original cast: Lindsay Lohan, Amanda Seyfried, Lacey Chabert and Rachel McAdams.CBS via Getty Images
The musical numbers are mostly bright, brash and frequently awful. The songs just keep coming at you, noisily whirring with speed and determined to make maximum impact. It’s gym-class dodgeball all over again.
Mean Girlsis in theaters Friday.
source: people.com
