Being a teen flick, Mean Girls surprisingly made a lot of money and was one of the most successful flicks of 2004. The plain reason behind it was the fact that movie was hilariously written and well executed by all the actors. You had the brilliance of Rachel McAdams, and Lindsay Lohan’s gorgeous red hair, and of course Tina Fey’s spot-on hilarity. All these things (and many more) contributed to the movie’s success.
So who came up with idea of making a sequel to a movie that had a much closed ending, with no room for a part 2, and was watched, loved and finished then and there? Also, what’s the logic behind coming up with a sequel almost 6 years later? Well, if anyone is going to take that much time to come up with a movie, they may as well try to make it watchable?
Mean Girls 2, unfortunately, is just some girly flick with all the Disney stars (from popular Disney shows such as Wizards of Waverly Place, JONAS and Cory in the House.) The only thing the movie has going for it is the similarity in the two scripts.
It starts off with Johanna Mitchell (known by her nickname Jo) who is a complete tomboy (obviously; that’s the only way she would be impervious to the ‘girl world’.) Her father works for NASCAR and has the two of them travelling all the time. Finally, they settle down, and she starts attending North Shore High to complete her high school.
There she bumps into this accident-prone girl, Abby (played by Jennifer Stone) who is rich and cute and everything, even then she’s unpopular. Abby’s father then tries to buy Jo’s friendship with his unpopular daughter and tells her that he’ll pay for her college tuition if Jo helps Abby have a good graduating year. Jo accepts this offer and then becomes friends with Abby.
Guess what happens next? Yeah, she actually starts liking Abby. So great, the two become best friends and live happily ever after right? Wrong. We are forgetting about the Plastics, the most important part of the Mean Girls phenomena. The three plastics, headed by Mandy Weatherly (Maiara Walsh, also seen in Desperate Housewives once as Gabby’s adopted teenage daughter) has a personal grudge against Abby, the rich unpopular girl, since they both were kids, because Abby always had the better toys. So she spent all her life plotting against her and vowed to make Abby’s life miserable.
That leads to a battle of the sickest, where the two gangs, the plastics and the anti-plastics (headed by Jo and Abby) plot against each other to see who gets whom first. They try destroying each other’s reputations and home and future college prospects. The pranks went up one notch when the plastics sabotage Jo’s father’s race car by destroying its engine.
Unfortunately, in this cat and mouse chase, the humour gets lost somewhere. The pranks aren’t funny, the dialogues aren’t witty, and the characters are predictable and typical. Nothing in this movie has anything that would stand out. If nothing else, quite a few people (guys mainly) must have seen the first movie just to watch Lindsay Lohan’s hot-curvy-body days. This so called sequel didn’t even have that.
Perhaps the eye candy used was kind of appealing. Tyler Adams (played by Diego Gonzalez, seen repeatedly in Pretty Little Liars) who plays our leading lady’s love interest, is dreamy, good-looking, popular, but benevolent, just like last time.
Also, to add some originality in addition to the butchering of the original movie, the writers made Jo more cool compared to Lindsay Lohan’s character. She instantly becomes popular without the help of the Plastics, and apparently guys find her more hot too (who wouldn’t when the ‘hottest girls’ in school, AKA the plastics, can be seen walking around in these atrociously oversized headbands with large flowers stuck on their heads.) The fashion quotient seemed a little dead too. Somehow, the Plastics were either dressed in over-sized clothes, or trying to look cool in all these flowery frilly dresses. It’s amazing how these girls were popular in the first place. Jo was definitely the most stylish chick around, even though all she wore were tank tops and ripped jeans and tees.
Mean Girls was such a fantastic movie that even 6 years later the movie has jokes which are still funny and relevant. Everything was over- exaggerated but still looked believable. With the sequel, it seems like a desperate attempt to re-create the magic. Even though this is a girl teen flick, I have a feeling that even teens won’t be able to watch the entire movie and actually enjoy it. Not funny and not inspiring. We recommend you watch the original Mean Girls movie instead.
-- Manal Faheem Khan |
