Mean Girls

Lean 'Girls'
by Ed Owens

I've long been a fan of dark comedies -- usually, the meaner the better. Many films have successfully captured that wicked edge (Heathers, for example, considered by many to be the finest of the lot), while others have struggled seemingly against nature itself. Finding the balance is a tight-rope walk few are capable of, though I'm always open to any film willing to try it. The latest attempt is Mean Girls, a film that rushes headlong into the darkness only to recoil at the implications.

Inspired by Rosalind Wiseman's “Queen Bees and Wannabes: Helping Your Daughter Survive Cliques, Gossip, Boyfriends and other Realities of Adolescence,” Mean Girls is a softly satirical swipe at catty adolescence written by SNL comedienne Tina Fey and directed by Freaky Friday's Mark S. Waters. But what starts out as a promising dark comedy ends up being largely nyctophobic, shying away from the darker fringes even as it alludes to them.

Lindsay Lohan plays Cady Heron, the home schooled daughter of a pair of zoologists. After being raised in the wilds of Africa for fifteen years, she is returned now to the wilds of the American high school (an idea more keenly observed than executed). She is then befriended by a mannish goth-type named Janis (Lizzy Caplan) and her “almost too gay to function” sidekick Damien (Daniel Franzese), who show her (and us) the ropes by laying out the high school hierarchy -- preps, jocks, nerds, etc. Sitting proudly and stylishly atop the food chain are The Plastics, a trio of uber-popular girls who set the rules for everybody else's game. The “Queen Bee” is Regina George (Rachel McAdams) who sees Cady as formless clay waiting to be made in her own image.

The thing that struck me most about Mean Girls, a film I went in expecting to loathe, began starting to like, then ultimately just felt cheated by, is its consistent vacillation between the dark comedy it so desperately wants to be and the crowd-pleasingly light teen comedy it ends up being. Tina Fey has sharper wit and stronger nerve, as evidenced by some of her better writing/delivery on the otherwise flailing SNL, but everything here feels muted, subdued. I almost think the film would have better succeeded by not approaching the edge at all, and thereby not constantly reminding us of the shallowness it embraces rather than the depths it might have plumbed.

Comparisons to the infinitely better (and infinitely darker) Heathers are inescapable, and the film all but begs them. Lindsay Lohan, almost too adorable for a role that requires she also be edgy, falls too easily into the role of willful player in everyone's malicious reindeer games -- but even at her imitation darkest, she's still more Claire Standish than Veronica Sawyer. The other actors, including a slew of supporting players from the last SNL reunion, are similarly constrained, including an otherwise funny Tim Meadows as the high school principal.

Mean Girls ultimately ends up treading the same treacly “After School Special” territory it starts off lampooning, with moralizing speeches and didactic monologues that come off as more tiresome than refreshing, especially given the shadows in which the film has occasionally played throughout. While Heathers ended on a similarly upbeat note, the triumph was bittersweet, maintaining that film's tone right up to the closing shot. Mean Girls flakes out early on, and ends up without a consistent tone to call its own.