Tina Fey wrote Mean Girls after reading a 2002 self-help book, and you can feel the book under the movie. Rosalind Wiseman’s Queen Bees and Wannabes mapped high school cliques, bullying and the damage they do. Fey turned that map into a screenplay, pulled in her own time at Upper Darby High School in Pennsylvania, and handed it to director Mark Waters. The result runs 97 minutes and opened in the United States on April 30, 2004, through Paramount Pictures, after a premiere at the Cinerama Dome in Hollywood on April 19.
Trailer, via thecoolidge.
Cady Heron and the Plastics
Cady Heron, played by Lindsay Lohan, is 16 and has spent twelve years homeschooled in Africa. On her first day at North Shore High School she makes no friends, gets patronized by teachers, and falls in with two outcasts, Janis Ian and Damian Leigh. They explain the school’s cliques and warn her about the Plastics: Regina George, Gretchen Wieners and Karen Smith.
Then the Plastics invite her in. Janis sees a chance and plans to destroy Regina’s reputation from inside. Cady goes along, then starts to enjoy it, including the Burn Book, a scrapbook of insults about classmates and teachers.
The plot turns on Aaron Samuels, Regina’s ex. Cady falls for him. At a Halloween party Regina promises to speak for her, then kisses him instead. Cady commits fully to Janis’s plan. She tricks Gretchen into giving up secrets, sabotages Regina’s relationship with Aaron while pretending to need math tutoring she does not need, and feeds Regina high-calorie bars sold as diet food. Regina gains weight, wears sweatpants on a Monday, breaks the Plastics’ dress code, and gets pushed out.
A Cast Built Against Type
The casting is the film’s sharpest piece of engineering. Fey, producer Lorne Michaels and Paramount chairman Sherry Lansing wanted Lohan after Freaky Friday in 2003. Lohan was set for Regina but ended up as Cady, partly because executives feared the mean-girl role would alienate her audience.
Rachel McAdams took Regina. Fey felt McAdams being kind and polite made her right for a character that evil. Waters, who had directed Lohan in Freaky Friday, thought Lohan was a little intimidated by McAdams, and liked the dynamic. McAdams had auditioned for Cady but was judged a bit too old.
Amanda Seyfried, in her feature debut, auditioned for Regina and landed Karen instead. Lizzy Caplan was first thought too beautiful for Janis, a role Waters wanted a Kelly Osbourne type for, but she won it on raw emotion.
What the Book Gave the Movie
Fey’s source was nonfiction, and Mean Girls keeps the shape of an argument. It names the mechanism: a queen bee, an insecure gossiper, a bubbly airhead, and a newcomer who learns the rules fast. The Burn Book is a scrapbook of insults about classmates and teachers, and it is the engine of the story’s second half.
The film was shot mostly in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, from September to November 2003, though it is set in the Chicago suburb of Evanston, Illinois.
Here is how the production ran:
| Stage | When |
|---|---|
| Principal photography begins | September 2003 |
| Principal photography ends | November 2003 |
| Hollywood premiere, Cinerama Dome | April 19, 2004 |
| U.S. theatrical release, Paramount | April 30, 2004 |
| Runtime | 97 minutes |
The best choices in the film, ranked:
- McAdams as Regina, cast against her own temperament.
- Caplan as Janis, cast against her looks.
- Seyfried as Karen, cast against her original audition.
- Lohan as Cady, the lead the studio was afraid to give her.
Where the Film Slips
Mean Girls is funny and it is well built, but it is not as sharp as its reputation. The revenge plot runs long, and Cady’s turn from observer to participant is the part that needed the most room and gets the least.
The film’s own tagline is “Watch your back.” That is the whole idea, and the movie says it early.
What holds up is the casting logic. A kinder actress makes Regina crueler. A prettier actress makes Janis sadder. Seyfried’s daffiness is not a joke about Karen, it is Karen.
What dates is the machinery. The math tutoring, the diet bars, the scrapbook: these are the film’s real subject, and they are also the plot’s weakest joints, because they ask the audience to accept that a smart girl would do all of this and learn nothing until the last reel.
The film premiered in April 2004 and reached theaters at the end of that month. This paper has called it a definitive teen comedy in the years since, and that framing deserves a caveat. It is a good one. It is not a great one. The writing is clever but the structure is conventional, and the satire lands hardest when it is describing the school rather than driving the story.
Fey’s screenplay is best when it is cataloguing, worst when it is resolving. The Plastics are a system. The movie wants them to be a lesson.
Mean Girls earns its place as a comedy of manners with a real book behind it and a cast that understood the assignment better than the script did. It is worth watching for McAdams alone, and for the way the film turns Wiseman’s research into a machine that eats its own members. It is not worth the reverence.
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