Warning: May contain low-key spoilers for the film.
20 years on, and Mean Girls is back. With a couple of twists.
No, the new musical movie is not a sequel – it doesn’t even feel like a remake, more like a revisit to a beloved tale.
It’s the next step in the Mean Girls evolution. The story was inspired by 2002 book Queen Bees and Wannabes, made into a film by Tina Fey in 2004, a musical on New York’s Broadway in 2018 and now a musical on screen.
And what’s GLAMOUR’s verdict? It’s excellent fun. It’s clever, meta and seriously self aware. The script has been upgraded for 2024, with a lot of nostalgia mixed in with iconic scenes kept from the original.
Shout out to Busy Phillips, who smashes it as Regina’s “cool mom” and Spider-Man actor Angourie Rice who fills tricky shoes in the role that made a superstar out of Lindsay Lohan, protagonist Cady Heron.
Here are our top 10 takeaways from the new Mean Girls musical movie.
Busy Philipps plays Mrs. George in Mean Girls from Paramount Pictures. Photo: Jojo Whilden/Paramount © 2023 Paramount Pictures.JOJO WHILDEN
1. The new faces playing Damian and Janis steal the show
Absolute stars Jaquel Spivey and Auli’i Cravalho play Cady’s best friends Damian and Janis respectively, and they are an utter delight. Their performances bookend the movie, narrating the start and finish to the story.
Jaquel is both hilarious and charming in his onscreen debut, and we predict everyone is going to want to be best friends with Auli’i’s Janis. Her amazing performance of the musical track I’d Rather Be Me rejects ideas of how women should behave and is an anthem of self acceptance. Can we get an amen?
Janis is also quick to point out to Cady how bad it is to play dumb for a guy. We all need that feminist energy in our lives.