Mean Girls

Year: 2004

Grade: B-

Country: USA

Director: Waters

Review

obviously this film gets graded on a different scale than, say, a tree grows in brooklyn…with that in mind the film was pretty decent. it maintains a lot of the same conventions of teen movies, especially in the ending, but tina fey wrote the screenplay so you know you can expect some intelligent humor and hearty laughs. the guy who played kevin gnapoor was really good and had the same sort of effect on the film that leonardo nam had on “perfect score,” but he didn’t get as much screen time. lindsay lohan isn’t a very good actress, but in a film like this that’s pretty much expected. generally films like this have a lot of top 40 teenage pop hits, and this film was no exception, however there was one orbital tune at the very end that made me think there was some good taste that went into making the film. mark waters’ (house of yes) direction was formulaic at almost every turn, but, again, that’s a function of the genre rather than the man. to be fair the teen flick as a genre does have some redeeming qualities. sure there is often a lack of acting and directing talent, the soundtrack is dictated more by proposed soundtrack sales than artistic merits, and the stories are often extremely formulaic. but sometimes teen movies address real concerns of a much aligned segment of our society, they can also be easy, light fun, and occasionally they step outside of the conventions and turn into genuinely good films. this one didn’t enter that territory, but it did address issues like the hypocrisy within sex education – “don’t ever do it because you’ll get aids, but here are some condoms in case you decide to anyway.” it’s certainly not a “breakfast club” or even a “10 things i hate about you,” but it was fun enough.