The new “Mean Girls” movie is a subpar movie and a garbage adaptation.

The new “Mean Girls (2024)” movie has hit theaters with mixed reviews. Some have revered the movie as the perfect mix between the original and the broadway adaptation. Others are outraged by how the movie butchered both.

Arguably, the film was more of an adaptation of the musical than it was an update of the original, though it tried very hard to combine both. Therein lies the problem.

When you combine musicals and movies, there needs to be a balance between showing with music versus actually showing the audience with a camera. “Mean Girls (2024)” does not find that balance.

Out of the twelve main songs from the movie, I felt that only three of them were good: “Apex Predator”, “Sexy” and “Revenge Party.” These songs fit well into the context of the movie and were just a lot of fun. The actors in the song also seemed like they were having a good time recording them.

However, a couple of the songs had me physically cringing in my seat. “Stupid With Love” was the main offender.

I understand that they were trying to contemporize the Broadway show tunes, but this song was absolutely criminal.

The original musical version of “Stupid With Love” was upbeat and poppy. It was about a girl falling in love again for the first time in seven years. It characterized Cady as someone who was naive but excited at the prospect of romance.

The film’s version strips the fun instrumentation in favor of a slowed down, more contemporary track. It reminds me of when the cast of “Riverdale” performed “Heathers,” and not in a good way.

This song does not carry the energy of a former homeschooled girl getting a crush. It feels like a better fit for an AI learning what love is.

In general, most of the songs felt disjointed from the actual movie. Part of this may be the fact that the characters would look directly into the camera when singing. Another factor could be that many of the songs felt like they were music videos added in post.

Though some of the musical choices in the movie were bad, the character development was far worse.

None of the characters had believable arcs. 

Gretchen Wieners had the least believable character arc out of all of them. In the movie, her arc revolves around her learning to live without the approval of others.

The biggest problem with this is the movie does not give her enough screen time for the audience to sympathize with her. Instead, they cut her part out of “Meet the Plastics” and then, despite barely introducing her, gave her a song where she’s desperately trying to figure out what’s wrong with her as a person.

The producers of the movie didn’t give any of the characters enough screen time to actually develop their characters, let alone Gretchen.

Not only that, but not a single character learns a lesson in this movie.

In the original movie, Cady learned that being fake in order to gain attention or friends hurts the people around you. She also learned that pretending to be dumb in order to get the attention of men can have unintended consequences.

The new film has the hollow skeleton of those lessons, but we never actually see Cady get to learn them. Instead, the moral is forcefully shoved down our throats by Mrs. Norbury, Janice and Damien.

Overall, the movie was just poorly put together. It seems like the producers had no clue how to adapt a musical into a movie.