Went to see high school comedy du jour ‘Mean Girls’ last night, on the strength of some truly average reviews from numerous outlets.
I was mildly surprised to find that these average reviews are far too generous.
Perhaps everyone is hoping desperately that writer-actor Tina Fey becomes the saviour of comedy, and by a massive emperor’s-new-clothes style collective act of will on this movie it will somehow come to pass.
Its an absolute mess. The zingy, sharp first half transforms into a lumbering and clumsy behemoth in the second half. Tina Fey delivers a painful Mary-Sue that should have been cut right out. Nothing remotely meaningful or memorable about any of the characters is established at any point. At the end you can see the kabuki hand of plot requirement pushing characters into life-changing wisdom and new friendships and romances without any plausible explanation.
Its just a mess, and frankly, I was disappointed. The golden age of the high school comedy remains the mid-to-late nineties. Mean Girls was never going to sit at the same table as American Pie or Clueless, but it doesn’t even earn a place near, say, Can’t Hardly Wait.
The physical comedy is good, though, if you like that sort of thing.