DVD Reviews

Mean Girls – Blu-ray Review

By Frankie Dees Apr 13, 2009, 18:27 GMT

Raised in the African bush country by her zoologist parents, Cady Heron (Lindsay Lohan) thinks she knows about "survival of the fittest." But the law of the jungle takes on a whole new meaning when the home-schooled 15-year-old enters public high school for the first time and falls prey to the psychological warfare and unwritten social rules that teenage girls face today. ...more

Five years later, ‘Mean Girls’, shepherded by a script from Tina Fey who also stars, remains the ‘Clueless’ of its era. With a headlining performance from Lindsay Lohan who at that time was on the verge of being a major star, the pic is a funny mostly safe teen comedy for the whole family.

Ahh, 2004 – that was when Lindsay Lohan was still a virginal young thing with only but a Disney twinkle in her eye. Now her serious mug is splashed across ‘US Weekly’ with the claim ‘I am so alone’. After a series of questionable choices both personal and professional (‘I Know Who Killed Me’!?), Lohan has a major uphill battle of trying to regain any credibility again in Hollywood, which is a shame when looking at ‘Mean Girls’.

Of course, maybe these career paths are inevitable – Alicia Silverstone never succumbed to any controversy but where’s she at now? So we’ll always have ‘Clueless’ and ‘Mean Girls’ to remember these gals as they were. It’s better than having to suffer through ‘Excess Baggage’ and ‘I Know Who Killed Me’ again.

Based on the novel ‘Queen Bees and Wannabes’ by Rosalind Wiseman, Tina Fey’s adaptation is a clever reworking of a tired genre and while it doesn’t completely avoid all the conventions is still smarter than most.

Lohan stars as Cady, a teen who up to this point was home-schooled while living an adventure with her parents in Africa. Finally settling down, she now has to negotiate even more dangerous territory – an American High School.

Narrating the film, we see her quietly suffer her first day but she eventually befriends the school outcasts, Goth girl Janice (Lizzy Caplan) rumored to be gay and definitely gay Damian (Daniel Franzese), a chubby guy who has embraced his gayness with glee.

Guiding her through the seemingly never-ending cliques and regulations of high school (in a sequence that directly rips off ‘Clueless’ – homage or theft? You decide.), they end up on the “plastics”, the three titular ‘mean girls’ who prance around school with tight outfits but loose…well.

The queen of the plastics is Regina George (Rachel McAdams), the blonde archrival of Janice with the two apparently sharing a history. When Cady gets the chance to join up with the plastics, Janice encourages her so she can get all the dirt. But when Cady gets the eyes for Regina’s ex-boyfriend Aaron (Jonathan Bennett), the gloves come off and Regina and Cady become embroiled in a war where there can only be one survivor, dramatic I know.

There’s nothing terribly new here with the high school stereotypes alive and well and a handful of narrative strings lifted from any number of past teen films (including one of my faves, ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’) but the execution is what makes this a success as well as the 110% offered up by the cast including Lohan, McAdams, Fey as a teacher and Fey’s fellow SNL alum Tim Meadows as the principal.

There will always be room for a well-made teen film and it seems every generation now has that one film for representation from ‘American Graffiti’ and ‘Fast Times at Ridgemont High’ to ‘Clueless’ and now ‘Mean Girls’.

While it may not be quite the modern classics those are (Cady’s daydreams of high school life emulating the African wilderness a key weak spot and more belonging to a sitcom), it’s still clever, funny and honest to that sometimes devastating communal practice of high school.

Bright and colorful, the 1080p 1.85:1 MPEG4 transfer is quite good with no grain or flaws in the transfer. Obviously not action-packed, you probably couldn’t ask for much better when considering the genre. A Dolby TrueHD 5.1 track is also provided.

All special features are carried over from the DVD with an audio commentary from director Mark Waters, screenwriter/star Tina Fey and producer Lorne Michaels starting things off. A half-hour making of ‘Only the Strong Survive’ is next with the usual cast and crew interviews.

‘The Politics of Girl World’ is a 12 minute featurette from author Wiseman who details the issues central to her book and hence the movie. ‘Plastic Fashion’ is a quick look at the costumes of the mean gals. There are nine ‘Deleted Scenes’ that run about 8 minutes. A short ‘Gag Reel’ and the film’s theatrical trailer finish things off.

With spot-on casting, a witty script from Tina Fey and a family-safe PG-13 rating, this pic definitely comes recommended chiefly when considering the great Blu-ray specs.