Mean Girls
| Mean Girls | |
|---|---|
| File:Mean Girls movie.jpg | |
| Directed by | Mark Waters |
| Written by | Tina Fey (screenplay) Rosalind Wiseman (book) |
| Produced by | Lorne Michaels |
| Starring | Lindsay Lohan Rachel McAdams Lacey Chabert Amanda Seyfried Tina Fey |
| Distributed by | Paramount Pictures |
Release dates | April 19, 2004 (United States) |
Running time | 97 min. |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $17,000,000 |
Mean Girls is a 2004 film written by (and co-starring) Tina Fey. It stars Lindsay Lohan, Amanda Seyfried, Lacey Chabert and Rachel McAdams and featured several Saturday Night Live cast members, including Tina Fey, Tim Meadows, Ana Gasteyer, and Amy Poehler.
Director, Mark Waters described the movie as "Clueless meets Heathers "[1], the latter of which was written by his brother, Daniel Waters. It was based on the non-fiction book Queen Bees and Wannabes by Rosalind Wiseman, which describes how female high school social cliques operate, and the effect they can have on girls.
Box office
The movie was declared a smash hit after opening weekend made the film $24.4 million dollars and the #1 position at 2,839 theaters. Mean Girls had a long life at the box office and finished its run with $86,058,055. In its second weekend in theaters, the movie only lost 44% of fans and the week after that an even better 26%. The film ended up becoming the movie that truly put Lohan back on the map in terms of a movie career.
Plot
The movie centers round 16 year-old Cady (pronounced "Cay-dee") Heron (played by Lindsay Lohan) who moves to Evanston, Illinois, a Chicago suburb, after being raised in Africa by her zoologist parents. Cady's family moved there after her mother received tenure at Northwestern University. She begins attending North Shore High School, where she meets Damian and Janis. Damian (Daniel Franzese) is "almost too gay to function," and Janis (Lizzy Caplan) is artistic and somewhat alternative; neither is very popular. She later encounters The Plastics (Regina George, the Queen Bee, played by Rachel McAdams; Gretchen Weiners, the gossip, played by Lacey Chabert; and Karen Smith, the dumb blonde, played by Amanda Seyfried) at her new school - three beautiful and popular girls who invite Cady to become their friend.
Initially reluctant, Cady joins the group so she can learn their dark secrets at the behest of Damian and Janis. However, when Cady becomes infatuated with Regina's ex-boyfriend, Aaron Samuels (played by Jonathan Bennett), Regina reinforces her Queen Bee status by reclaiming him. Cady, Damian, and Janis plot together to bring Regina down and remove her from her high social status. Janis refers to Regina as an "evil dictator" and asks Cady, "How do you bring down a dictator? You cut off her resources." Janis defines these resources to be Regina's "technically good physique,"( Hot Body) her "high status man candy," (Aaron Samuels) and her "loyal band of ignorant followers." (Army of Skanks)
At first their attempts don't work, and in fact only make Regina more popular; but Janis, Cady, and Damian finally succeed. Much to Cady's surprise, Gretchen and Karen turn to her as their new Queen Bee. Her newfound popularity, with its attendant status and power, goes to Cady's head and she unwittingly emulates Regina's behavior. Events come to a climax at a party Cady throws while her parents are out of town. She tells her parents she wants to stay behind to go to Janis' art show, and tells Janis and Damian she is going out of town with her parents. Originally meant to be a small affair designed to bring her closer to Aaron, the party quickly grows out of control. Cady gets drunk at the party, admits to Aaron that she faked being bad at calculus to attract his attention, and then vomits on him. He leaves in disgust just as Janis and Damian pull up in a car, outraged that she lied to them. Janis screams at Cady that she has become Plastic, then drives off with Damian. Regina also arrives at the party and vows revenge.
The key to her plan is the Burn Book, originally created by The Plastics, which contains mean (sometimes accurate observations and "burns" of most of the girls in their grade and some of their teachers. She plants a picture of herself in the book and tearfully turns it over to the school's principal, Mr. Duvall (played by Tim Meadows), noting that Cady, Gretchen, and Karen are the only girls not in it. The three are called to his office and asked to confess, but the meeting is interrupted when his assistant runs in, exclaiming, "The girls have gone wild!" It's shown that Regina has photocopied every page of the book and distributed the copies throughout the school so that they can be discovered by the people they lampoon. The girls begin rioting, fighting each other viciously until Mr. Duvall breaks a fire alarm to set off the sprinklers. He orders all junior girls to report to the gymnasium, where the entire class seems to have fallen for Regina's frame job. They shun Cady universally.
Mr. Duvall attempts to deal with the cliques that have formed and "girl" problems, but is derailed by a girl who misinterprets his invitation to discuss their problems and describes her menstrual period. Ms. Norbury (played by Tina Fey) begins a seminar to get the girls to confront their problems directly. Each of the cliques is plagued by infighting, unspoken feelings of resentment, and strong distrust. The girls then must write apologies to each other and read aloud them to the whole grade. Cady cannot do this without admitting that she wrote about Ms. Norbury in the Burn Book; she goes to the back of the line, prompting Janis to angrily get up in front of the grade and scrap her original apology in favor of a thinly-veiled tirade about Cady. She reveals all the tricks they played on Regina over the year; hearing this, Regina storms out of the gym. Cady follows her to apologize, but Regina cuts her off, angrily telling Cady that she is worse than herself because she attempts to maintain a facade of innocence despite her actions as Queen Bee. In the middle of her rant, Regina gets hit by a bus.
The revelation of the Burn Book and the accident convince Cady that she must "suck all the poison out of [her] life", comparing her situation to receiving a snake bite. She apologizes first to Regina, who has received a severe spinal injury and apologizes to Ms. Norbury for her false Burn Book entry. Ms. Norbury accepts her apology, but adds one last penance: Cady must participate in the Mathletes (the school's math team) state finals, which takes place the same day as the Spring Fling dance.
Cady ends up breaking a tie and winning the final for North Shore High. Ms. Norbury encourages her to go to the dance despite being grounded, and the Mathletes arrive at the Spring Fling in time for Mr. Duvall to announce Cady as Spring Fling Queen. Surprised, she takes the stage to apologize one last time to everyone. She discusses the Queen's crown, and says that it is only plastic and of no real worth. She asks for Janis and Damian's forgiveness in person, and they agree to forget about their fight. She breaks the queen's crown into pieces, throws it into the audience, and the dance resumes. Aaron asks her for a dance and they kiss.
At the beginning of Cady's senior year, the turmoil of her junior year has subsided. Regina has made a full recovery and her physical therapist has taught her to channel all her anger into sports; namely, lacrosse. The other Plastics have moved on. Gretchen has made friends with the 'cool Asians', Karen is a weather girl for the school's news channel, and Cady is content to be an average high school student. The film ends on a rather ominous note, hinting at a new generation of Plastics in the new freshman class.
Analysis
In an interview about the film, Fey noted, "Adults find it funny. They are the ones who are laughing. Young girls watch it like a reality show. It's much too close to their real experiences so they are not exactly guffawing" [2].
The role of Janis poked fun at many lesbian stereotypes. For example, the actress who played her, Lizzy Caplan, bore a strong resemblance to Nancy McKeon (McKeon's character on The Facts of Life, Jo Polniaczek, has been parodied in pop culture circles for the last twenty years as being the epitome of "butch dyke"). The character's full name is Janis Ian - a nod to the lesbian singer-songwriter of the same name, whose early work dealt extensively with adolescent cruelty. While it is hinted at many times during the film that Janis is a lesbian (when asked, she says that her ethnicity is Lebanese, a similar joke being used by Ellen DeGeneres on her sitcom prior to her coming out of the closet, as well as on one episode of The Golden Girls which featured a lesbian supporting character), she is revealed to have a boyfriend, none other than star mathlete and amateur rapper Kevin Gnapoor.
Though the movie was inspired by the book Queen Bees and Wannabes by Rosalind Wiseman, another non-fiction book for teens, Mean Girls: Facing Your Beauty Turned Beast authored by Hayley DiMarco, was released at the same time as the movie.[citation needed] DiMarco had previously written Dateable: Are You? Are They? and is credited with creating the Biblezine concept while at Thomas Nelson Publishers. Characters and behaviors in the movie are based on Tina Fey's high school life at Upper Darby High School.[citation needed]
Cliques
In the film, the following cliques are mentioned:
- Freshmen
- ROTC Guys
- Preps
- J.V. (Junior Varsity) Jocks
- Asian Nerds (e.g. Tim Pak)
- Cool Asians (e.g. Trang Pak, Sun Jinh Dinh)
- Varsity Jocks (e.g. Jason)
- Unfriendly Black Hotties
- Girls Who Eat Their Feelings (Overweight/Obese)
- Girls Who Don't Eat Anything (Anorexic)
- Sexually Active Band Geeks (e.g. Kristen Hadley)
- Desperate Wannabes (.e.g. Bethany Byrd, Jessica Lopez)
- Burnouts (e.g. Amber D'Alessio)
- The Greatest People You'll Ever Meet (e.g. Janis, Damian, Cady Heron, among others) (Art Freaks)
- The Plastics (The Worst) (e.g. Regina George, Karen Smith, Gretchen Wieners, Cady Heron)
Each clique has their own cafeteria fracture table, as seen in a montage narrated by Janis.
Trivia
 | This article contains a list of miscellaneous information. |
- Film grossed $86,058,055 in the United States, making it Lindsay Lohan's second highest-grossing film to date.
- This was Lohan's first non-Disney movie.
- A sequel is mentioned by Tina Fey very briefly in the special feature of the DVD, but it is likely it's only a joke.
- Rachel McAdams wears a blond wig in this movie, as revealed by the director and the writer in the DVD commentary. Her actual hair color is dark brown, as shown in the Wes Craven thriller Red Eye.
- Lacey Chabert was the only choice for the role of Gretchen.
- Tina Fey admits that she was drawn to Jonathan Bennett to play Aaron Samuels because of his strong resemblance to her Saturday Night Live castmate Jimmy Fallon.
- Amanda Seyfried, who plays Karen in the film, originally auditioned for the role of Regina, but producer Lorne Michaels felt she may be better suited for "the dumb one."
- Ashley Tisdale, who is a good friend of Lindsay Lohan, tried out for the role of Karen but lost it to Amanda Seyfried.
- Tim Meadows broke his wrist prior to shooting the movie, so Mr. Duvall's carpal tunnel syndrome had to be written into the script.
- During the gymnasium confessional, Tim Meadows says "Who has a lady problem that they'd like to talk about?", a reference to his character "Leon Phelps" on SNL.
- This movie is listed as Mariah Carey's favorite movie on her website.
- A poster of Carey's single "Can't Take That Away (Mariah's Theme)" is on Damian's wall in a scene.
- Carey's fan made a burn book, similar to the one in the movie, but with different people in it.[citation needed]
- The term "fetch" has caught on out of irony, as a sarcastic criticism of new trends [3]
- The film takes place in Evanston, Illinois, but was filmed in Toronto, Ontario, Canada; in Malvern Collegiate Institute's auditorium and Etobicoke Collegiate Institute as the rest of the school.
- The high school in the film, North Shore High School, is fictional. The real high school is located in 353 N. Castlegory in Houston Texas. However, the Walker Brothers' Pancake House (which Cady wins coupons to in the movie) is a real pancake house in the Chicagoland area. Old Orchard Mall also exists, although it is an outdoor mall, not indoors as protrayed in the film.
- Regina means "Queen" in Latin and Regina is the "Queen Bee".
- The television program House makes an oblique reference to Mean Girls in the season 2 episode House vs. God:
- House: "How many times can you hit pause at the part where Lindsay Lohan wins the spelling bee? What is it about girls who can spell?"
- Wilson: "It's a math contest."
- House: "What is it about girls who can count?"
- Daniel DeSanto (voice actor of Rei Kon in the English version of Beyblade) played the pervert teen Jason, the boyfriend of Gretchen.
- It was also said that David Reale II (voice actor of Kai Hiwatari) made a cameo in the movie.
- The leader of the Asian Nerds (Tim Pak) is the brother of the Cool Asians leader (Trang Pak).
- On the DVD case, Cady is said to be 15, but she says that she is 16 in the movie.
- On the UK reality TV show, Big Brother 7, Canadian Richard Newman labelled fellow housemates "The Plastics." When confronted by returning housemates Grace Adams-Short and Nikki Grahame about the label, he revealed it to be a reference to the film, which he considered to be his favorite. This was later confirmed during the final day of the show ten days later, when presenter Davina McCall asked him about the name. He referred each contestant who was labelled "plastic" to the characters of the film.
- In the US, the film was originally given an R rating, due to its sexual material. Director Mark Waters edited down content, so the MPAA would give the film a PG-13 rating.[citation needed]
- Ranked #12 on Entertainment Weekly's list of 50 Best High School Movies.
- The mall scene was filmed in Sherway Gardens located in Etobicoke, Ontario.
- The fountain featured in Sherway Gardens (where Cady depicts teenagers acting like animals) was actually a set prop as that area is normally vacant with no fountain. Otherwise that space would be used to showcase fashion shows, art displays or any special event the mall would hold (i.e. Christmas décor and a North Pole where children can meet Santa Claus.)
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