The New 'Mean Girls' Musical Desperately Needed to Shed Its Fat Plotline

Mean Girls Musical Movie

Get in losers, we're going to watch Mean Girls. That's the 2024 movie adaptation of Mean Girls, the 2018 Broadway musical adaptation of Mean Girls, the 2004 movie. And no, it's not confusing at all that they each share the exact same title. (Luckily, the Rosalind Wiseman book off which the original film is based is called Queen Bees and Wannabes.)

For the third time in two decades we're getting a Tina Fey-created production detailing the high-school turf war between Cady Heron and Regina George. The original movie, starring Lindsay Lohan, Rachel McAdams and Amanda Seyfried, became a moderate success at the box office before reaching legendary cult status in the years to follow. In 2018, a musical based on the movie was staged on Broadway where it ran until the COVID pandemic shut it down and scooped up 12 Tony nominations (losing most to The Band's Visit). Not long into the Broadway run, rumors of a movie musical adaptation began to swirl with Fey announcing the project in early 2020.

All three versions of the story follow the same basic plot points, and you're basically a grotsky biotch if you don't know Mean Girls like the back of your hand. But for the uninformed, the story follows Cady Heron (played here by Mare of Easttown's Angourie Rice), who was raised in Kenya and returns to the states only to be confronted by the brutal pecking order at North Shore High School. She's initially befriended by a pair of misfits, the "too gay to function" Damian (Jaquel Spivey) and "d*ke" (2004) updated to "obsessed lesbian" (2024) Janis (Moana's Auli'i Cravalho). Damian and Janis explain to Cady that the school is run by "The Plastics," a trio of beauties helmed by the sinister Regina George (Reneé Rapp) flanked by the gossipy, insecure Gretchen Wieners (Bebe Wood) and the very very very dumb Karen Shetty (previously Smith, played by Avantika). When Regina realizes that Cady has a crush on her ex-boyfriend Aaron Samuels (Christopher Briney) and rekindles the relationship to spite Cady, she causes Cady, Janis and Damian to launch a systematic revenge offensive against the Plastics that doesn't end well for anyone.

Related: Rachel McAdams Explains Why She Turned Down the ‘Mean Girls’ Reunion Commercial

In the two reconfigurations of the story, the plot has been updated both structurally, adding 20+ songs to the Broadway musical and then chopping half of those for the movie musical, but also for timeliness. Social media was added to the Broadway show and updated with TikTok numbers for the 2024 movie. Offensive terms were swapped out, the cast was diversified and jokes were tied to more current events (there's even a "Thank U, Next" joke as a nod to the Ariana Grande music video).

Unfortunately, amid all the revamping, one glaring problem remains: the fat plotline. In the original movie, Cady and co.'s offensive against Regina largely revolves around making Regina fat, which in 2004 was the worst thing that could happen to a person. Cady tells Regina that calorically dense Kalteen Bars are actually weight-loss treats and Regina, who needs to "lose three pounds," begins to gobble them down, inadvertently gaining weight and therefore becoming a social pariah. The same plotline exists in the 2018 Broadway show.

Perhaps naively, I assumed that this plot point would have been swapped out for something more PC in 2024. As a society, after all, we're moving away from body shaming and towards body positivity (even if there's still plenty of room for improvement there). Spreading a message that the worst thing that can happen to a person is getting fat is incredibly outdated, and quite frankly harmful.

This concept was reinforced when Reneé Rapp was hired to play Regina. Rapp, who played the role on Broadway when she was just 19, has spoken openly about her body image issues and eating disorder, caused in part by her time in the musical. Rapp told The Guardian that people involved with the Broadway show "would say some vile f*cking things to me about my body." Already struggling with an eating disorder, the comments that she was too big to play Regina worsened her mental health to the point that her parents traveled to New York to convince her to quit the show.

Rather than steer clear of the weight-related plot points (you can, after all, be a school's queen bee and a bully with any body type), however, the 2024 movie leaned even harder into the fat plotline. Not only does Regina wolf down Kalteen bars to lose weight, become "so big" that she can't fit into any of her clothes but sweatpants, and manically spend hours on the tread mill, but now even the famed Christmas talent show number has been swapped to focus on Regina getting fatter. Rather than messy choreo and kicking the boom box into the crowd, the dance number goes awry because Regina, weighed down with Kalteen bars, is too heavy to execute a lift. It's just baffling that this plotline still exists when the show went out of its way to cut words like "slut" from the original to avoid sex shaming.

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It's especially annoying that Mean Girls (2024) has this big, fat, Kalteen-loaded albatross hanging around its neck, because the rest of the movie is quite wonderful. Rather than trying to cram every song from the musical into a too-long, bloated film, fledgling directors Samantha Jayne and Arturo Perez Jr. nixed nearly half the soundtrack, creating instead a hybrid of the original movie with just the best songs from the musical inserted.

The songs that did survive the culling are shot inventively, with choreography, costumes and sets that make each pop in their own way. The animal choreography of "Apex Predator," the use of TikTok videos in "Sexy" and the long, single take in "I'd Rather Be Me" all reinvigorate the songs for the big screen. Moreover, sequences like Regina's wet homecoming makeup trend and jokes like Tina Fey almost beginning a musical number are exciting additions to the movie.

The movie musical also soars on the back of a new crop of talented actors. While none of them are household names as of now, it's easy to imagine them gaining the status of their predecessors from the 2004 version. Reneé Rapp is dripping with star power, Bebe Wood (who was the best thing about Love, Victor) is incredibly funny as Gretchen and Avantika (who was also terrific in the under-appreciated Senior Year) just might be the best version of Karen yet. Jaquel Spivey and Auli'i Cravalho are impossible not to love, and Cravalho's belting of "I'd Rather Be Me" is easily the best moment of the entire film. Angourie Rice does an admirable job trying live up to Lindsay Lohan's boundless charisma and the adult cast (Fey, Tim Meadows, Busy Philipps, Ashley Park) are all fun in their brief appearances.

As a fan of the original movie and the musical, I of course have nit-picky quibbles with minute changes (like why did they rob Gretchen of the immaculate "THEY'RE BOTH IN THE COSTUME" and why is Rice's delivery of "I am filled with calculust" so underplayed?), but overall the movie is, dare I say, fetch. I'm just praying to Chanel, Celine Dion and Beyoncé that in 10 years when they adapt this for the fourth time that they jettison the godforsaken fat plotline. I never need to hear the word "Kalteen" again.

Grade: B

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