Above: Lindsay Lohan and Amanda Seyfried in Mr. Waters' film
It’s been ten years since
“Mean Girls,” Mark Waters’ pop ode to teenaged nastiness, splashed across movie
scenes. At the time, it was a hit; now,
it’s a phenomenon. According to The New York Times, people tweet about
the film almost non-stop and there are several spin-offs in development.
And yet…I can’t help feeling uneasy. I won’t deny that “Mean Girls” is a popular
film (and also a well-reviewed one). But
in the rapturous anecdotes of cast members explaining how the movie positively
affected people’s lives, I think there’s something incredibly
disingenuous. Perhaps Mr. Waters and his
cast and crew really did intend to create a morally upright movie, but I think
the result of their efforts really just celebrates noxious cruelty, without
even the integrity to recognize its own depravity.
Early in the story, the seeds of this poison are planted. “Mean Girls” is about Cady Heron (Lindsay
Lohan), a young girl who enters high school after being homeschooled most of
her life. Initially, she feels happy
hanging out with a couple of outcasts (Lizzy Caplan and Daniel Franzesse). Yet to her surprise, she’s scooped up by a ferociously
popular clique lead by Regina George (Rachel McAdams) and thereby absorbed into
the highest social stratosphere of the school.
If “Mean Girls” were like any other movie, this premise
might have popped like cheap bubble gum.
Yet instead, it turns into an almost gladiatorial battle. Cady’s other friends hold a vendetta against
Regina and so, they help Cady execute a meticulous plan to destroy Regina’s
life by alienating her from her friends and (in what is perhaps the greatest
insult to such a vain character) wrecking her perfect body.
Needless to say, this is the best part of the film; watching
it, I couldn’t help taking some savage glee in seeing someone as awful as
Regina manipulated and humiliated. Why? Because Cady destroys Regina that way we all
want to hurt the people who hurt us. She
doesn’t take the proverbial high road; she attacks Regina by playing Regina’s
own game of lies and intimidation. Except
by now, Cady has become the real master, a skillful practitioner of intricate
social sabotage and prank calls who spins everyone into her suffocating web.
In other words, Cady goes from being an innocent heroine
to a Vader-worthy monster. And she is a
complex character, one who makes you admire Tina Fey (who adapted the movie
from Rosalind Wiseman’s book “Queen Bees and Wannabes”) for creating one of the
rare truly depraved characters in mainstream youth cinema. The really remarkable thing? That she did it in an industry that usually
only permits bad behavior from men. Cady,
after all, is no thoughtless teenager.
She’s a clever, confident young woman and if she resembles anyone, it’s
Jordan Belfort in “The Wolf of Wall Street.”
Which brings us to the crux of the matter. One of the things that “Mean Girls” and “The
Wolf of Wall Street” have in common is that both they turn rule-breaking
cruelty into a garish, giddy spectacle.
Yet what makes “Wolf” such a deeply sincere film is that it doesn’t
pretend to be wholesome; in the end, its “hero” is just as wretched as he was
at the beginning. Yet “Mean Girls”
attempts to stage a sincere, noble reconciliation—as if to assure parents and
their children that yes, this movie is good for you.
For me, that’s what blows the film. How can a movie truly make you believe in
redemption when it spends so much of its running time dwelling on the opposite?
It can’t, which is why even the would-be
climax of “Mean Girls” gets shattered by narrative idiocy. It all starts in the gym, where all the girls
at school air their grievances, culminating with a tearful Regina finding out
about Cady’s long-running plan to sabotage her.
Then, she runs from the school…and gets hit by a bus. “And that’s how Regina George died,” Cady
tells us.
Except
she doesn’t. Miraculously, Regina
recovers in time to attend the school’s Spring Fling dance, where Cady is
crowned queen. And unlike Eve in “All
About Eve,” Cady doesn’t revel monstrously in the honor of eclipsing her
compatriots. Having learned the error of
her ways, she snaps her plastic crown into several pieces, tossing them out to
her fellow students, including Regina. Apparently, we can all live in a boring,
implausible utopia as long as good queen Lindsay Lohan rules over us all.
On paper, the crown-breaking does sound poetic and moving
(and I think a great director could have made it so). But I still doubt the movie’s sincerity. Who cares about Cady’s redemption? Not me; the movie makes being bad look
infinitely more fun. And while Cady rediscovers
her own goodness, I don’t believe that’s why anyone watches the film. Above all, “Mean Girls” cares about the
artful deviousness of its heroine and as a result, you do too.
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