I was originally going to write this blog as a double feature with Heathers, but I'm realizing I wrote way too much about this film, so the Heathers review will sadly be put on hold until next week.
I went into this movie with expectations: "It'll be fun, it'll have some quotable lines, but the story won't be anything to write home about." I came out surprised with the movie. It thoroughly subverted my expectations. It's fun and has quotable lines, but it's also actually very smart. Here's what I noticed. One big thing I was worried about as the film progressed was how the film would portray the "heroes," specifically Cady and Janis Ian, while they were doing mean girl things. A trap I feel a good many movies fall into, specifically high-school-bully revenge comedies, is "The villain is a flawed person, therefore doing bad things to them is justified because we ourselves, as the audience surrogates, cannot be flawed." The movie would have been fine and still funny if it had taken that route, but it wouldn't have been as satsifying narratively to see Regina be punished by Cady for things Cady herself is doing. It's already a pretty mean-spirited movie, if the title didn't already tip you off, so I totally could have seen Regina's life crumbling and then her getting hit by a bus and literally dying. Thankfully, though, the movie does not take the easy way out on this issue. Instead, the movie (Janis) spells it out for you that Cady is a titular "mean girl," among other things. And this is coming from the girl who manipulated and used Cady to try ruining Regina's life. Janis says the difference between Regina or Janis and Cady is that Regina and Janis don't pretend to be nice; they're out-and-proud mean girls. Cady puts on a face of being nice, but she's just as bad as the both of them. Also, the movie acknowledges that, although awful people, kids like Cady, Janis, and even Regina are still just kids. They still have time to grow up and mature. They have time to become better people. High school takes place during arguably the biggest stage of socio-emotional development in a person's life, so I'm so happy the movie points out that people can change through understanding and empathy rather than through counter-bullying and punishment alone. I'm glad the movie isn't just a generic bully revenge story. The filmmakers had so much more they wanted to say about high school bullying than just, "Want bullies to stop bullying? Just ruin their life lol," and I'm glad they were able to. I also want to talk about Regina George in-depth, including a scene that was sadly deleted from the final cut of the movie but really shouldn't have because it's kind of perfect. Regina George's introduction to the story honestly reminds me of Hannibal Lecter's long, drawn-out intro in The Silence of the Lambs. There's a great analysis video of Hannibal's introduction by The Closer Look on YouTube that really dissects Hannibal's first scene and the lead-up to it, and I'm going to use it as loose base for reading into Regina George's. First, there's the buildup. The meanest girls in school are introduced as the Plastics, and how bad they are is slowly built up: Karen Smith is the dumbest girl you will ever meet; Gretchen Wieners knows everything about everyone; and evil takes a human form in Regina George. Regina is the flawless queen bee who does car commercials in Japan and once punched a girl in the face (it was awesome). And those are just the descriptors that I can write here! None of them have even spoken a word yet, but we know these three are bad news for one reason or another. This serves as both the verbal introduction to the characters and also the "walk" down the row of "jail cells." They go from dumb to nosy to outright malicious as they're brought up. And then we actually meet the Plastics, and they're... fine? To poor, young, dumb, innocent Cady Heron, who's only a day-and-a-half into high school, that sweet summer child, they seem nice and well-adjusted. Airheaded, sure, but they can't be that bad, right? The villain "comforts" our leading lady after she is sexually harassed (something applicable to both this movie and The Silence of the Lambs), and we get to properly talk to the Plastics. Karen is as dumb as they say, and Gretchen is annoying, but Regina's actually really nice to Cady. It surprises her. She's invited to sit with the Plastics at lunch, talks about where she's from, is complimented, and is invited to sit with the three of them at lunch for the rest of the week. Maybe Janis was wrong after all. No. She wasn't. It's all manipulation to keep Cady close to her, but there's one specific thing I want to call attention to in this scene: eye contact. Regina George keeps intense eye contact with Cady Heron throughout the conversation and only briefly breaks that eye contact 3 times while speaking to her: once when she says she's not stupid (I can't tell if she's wounded because she's insecure or because she's not), once when she does that silent "Haha, oh, my God, guys, can you believe her?" thing with her friends that every high school bully seems to do, and once when she looks at Cady's bracelet to "compliment" her on it. On top of being offputting on its own--I would have had a heart attack if Rachel McAdams had been told to stare straight into the camera for some POV shots a la Silence of the Lambs--the eye contact is a clear test of the waters. Regina wants to know what this new girl's "deal" is. This may be best exemplified when Regina says, "But you're, like, really pretty." When Cady thanks her for the compliment, Regina responds, "So you agree? You think you're really pretty?" As an aside, this line is as close as you can get to psychological horror in a teen comedy for the audience because we know exactly what's up from that point forward. There's also this shot after Regina passes out the Burn Book pages that just exemplify her true power over the rest of the school. It's probably my favorite shot in the entire movie and is in this blog purely because I like it. Watching the school's full descent into chaos and the queen bee herself, victorious, standing proud and tall, watching over it all, with drums pounding in the background is truly a sight to behold. Finally, there's the heart-to-heart scene between Cady and Regina that was cut from the movie for some bizarre reason (link here, go watch). It's here that the movie finally explains Regina's character. She forgives Cady and sort of realizes her immaturity by comparing everything she's done during the movie to something she did when she was 7: Regina's mother wanted to give away an expensive dollhouse she never played with, so she threw it down the stairs and broke it so nobody else could have it. It's kind of a perfect metaphor, honestly. I'm glad this scene exists but sad that it's technically not canon, or at least isn't shown in the movie. (I never thought I'd be talking about the Mean Girls canon, but here we are.) Overall, I give this movie an 8/10. It's a classic of the "chick flick" genre. It's got a great story, a ton of great lines, and Regina George, what else could you want in a movie? My personal favorite is "Why should Caesar get to stomp around like a giant while the rest of us try not to get smushed under his big feet? What's so great about Caesar, hm? Brutus is just as cute as Caesar, 'kay, Brutus is just as smart as Caesar, people totally like Brutus just as much as they like Caesar, and when did it become okay for one person to be the boss of everybody, huh? Because that's not what Rome was about! We should totally just STAB CAESAR!" Alternatively, this one's pretty good.
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