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‘Mean Girls’ is an early 2000s classic

PHOTO PROVIDED Cady Heron (Lindsay Lohan) is pictured with "The Plastics," from left, Gretchen Weiners (Lacy Chabert), Regina George (Rachel McAdams) and Karen Smith (Amanda Seyfried) on a poster for the movie "Mean Girls."

If any members of my family look at this, even some friends past and present, they might roll their eyes and mutter “of course” when they see the headline. Yes, I’m about to review one of the greatest movies of the early 2000s: “Mean Girls.”

This movie is so iconic it had a direct to TV sequel in 2011 (not a great one I must say) and a Broadway musical adaption that hit the stage in 2018.

I can still quote a lot of scenes from it to this day and I haven’t even watched it in months (something I’m going to have to fix soon).

The movie stars Lindsay Lohan in her hey-day as 16-year-old Cady Heron, the new girl at North Shore High School in Illinois. Heron moved to the area with her zoologist parents after spending 12 years being home schooled in Africa.

Of course Cady learns pretty quick that high school is similar to the jungles and wildlife she saw while growing up in Africa. A funny bit of information she uses pretty often during her narration throughout the movie.

Cady first meets Janis Ian (Lizzy Caplan) and Damian (Daniel Franzese) in her homeroom. Janis and Damian quickly take Cady under their wing and start to tell her how things work in high school.

While skipping class, the two friends tell Cady about the three worst girls at North Shore. The Plastics.

There’s Karen Smith (Amanda Seyfried) who is the “dumbest person you’ll ever meet” according to Janis. To which Damian tells Cady she once asked him how to spell orange.

Then there’s Gretchen Weiners (Lacy Chabert) who knows everything about everyone. “That’s why her hair’s so big… it’s full of secrets,” Damian whispers to Cady. Her dad also apparently got rich inventing toaster strudel too.

“And evil takes a human form in Regina George,” Janis says about the leader of the plastics.

This leads to a great montage of people who talk about Regina (Rachel McAdams). They say things like “She has two Fendi purses and a silver Lexus” or “I hear she does car commercials… in Japan” and my personal favorite. “One time, she punched me in the face. It was awesome.”

Janis and Damian tell Cady to stay far away from the Plastics at all costs.

That becomes difficult after they defend her from a sexist classmate at lunch. Cady sits with them and starts to believe the three popular girls, even Regina George of all people, isn’t quite so bad.

Her newfound friendship with the Plastics leads Cady down a rabbit hole of newfound popularity. Mix that with the infamous “Burn Book” the group uses to shame their female classmates; a rivalry between Janis and Regina; and some sort of normal teenage drama and you’ll find yourself with a great movie.

Comedy legend Tina Fey wrote the script based on a 2002 book Queen Bees and Wannabees and mixed in some great comedy as well as a good lesson that tearing each other down doesn’t really help you in the long run.

Other well known names and faces that appear in the film are Amy Poehler as Regina’s “cool mom”; Tim Meadows as Principal Duvall who definitely has had enough with teenagers; and Fey as the recently divorced math teacher Ms. Norbury.

If you haven’t watched “Mean Girls” yet well… that’s not very fetch of you.

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Laura Jameson is a staff reporter at The Express.

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