Thursday, May 20
My wife and I saw Mean Girls today. Damn, that's a good film. I'm a big Tina Fey fan, which is why I went to see it in the first place, but now I'm equally a Lindsay Lohan fan. She plays an incredibly complex character struggling through her first experience in school (after being home schooled in Africa by her anthropologist parents). The movie's take on high school is dead on: it's like the animal kingdom, except that backstabbing replaces (barely) bloodlust. This is, easily, the smartest film about high school since Heathers. And it's a better film than Heathers, too, since in the end the characters figure out ways to resolve their problems with words rather than death and dismemberment. Well, okay, someone gets hit by a bus, but at least she recovers, and it's not really the point of the end, anyways. The point of the film--the moral, if you will--is that girls spend too much time being mean to each other, and it makes everyone miserable, so quit with the cliques and just be friends.
If there's a problem with the movie, it's that the guy characters are pretty one-dimensional (save Lohan's love interest, who seems marginally interesting, and the gay guy, who the girls see as one of their own anyways). I guess the film could have been more interesting if they'd thrown in a few "mean boys" as well, to point out that high school's a trauma for everyone. Still, this is a movie about mean girls, so the lack of mean boys isn't really a problem.
So check it out! It's a fun film, and it's a welcome relief considering the abhorrent shit that is masquerading for movies this year!
If there's a problem with the movie, it's that the guy characters are pretty one-dimensional (save Lohan's love interest, who seems marginally interesting, and the gay guy, who the girls see as one of their own anyways). I guess the film could have been more interesting if they'd thrown in a few "mean boys" as well, to point out that high school's a trauma for everyone. Still, this is a movie about mean girls, so the lack of mean boys isn't really a problem.
So check it out! It's a fun film, and it's a welcome relief considering the abhorrent shit that is masquerading for movies this year!
