Film Critique

"On Wednesdays we wear pink. “, "Get in, loser. We're going shopping “and “That’s so Fetch!” are just some of the funny lingo you’ll hear in this film. However, when you watch Mean Girls starring Lindsay Lohan as Cady and Rachel McAdams as Regina, you know you are going to get a lot of vicious laughs as Cady’s own claws come out as she leaps into the “Girl World”. The screenplay for the 2004 movie was written by Tina Fay, based on the book by Rosalind Wiseman, “Queen Bees and Wannabees” and produced by Mark Waters. The story follows Cady, raised in an African bush country by her Zoologist parents, who thinks she knows all about the “survival of the fittest”. But when the fifteen year old Cady enter public high school for the first time, “survival of the fittest” takes on a whole new meaning!

Cady is a 16 year old girl who has lived in Africa and been home-schooled all her life. When her parents move to America, they enroll her in high school, where she meets Janice and Damian. The high school and students in the school represent a jungle and the different cliques such as, mathaletes, popular girls, jocks and drama club all represent the different species in a jungle. Cady is thrown into the jungle as soon as she enters public school on her first day. On her second day, Cady meets Regina, Gretchen and Karen - the Plastics. The Plastics are the most popular girls in school, they have a “Burn Book”, in which they write really bitchy things about other girls and even have their own set of 'rules', such as “Only wear pink on Wednesday”, or “Jeans on Friday”.

The plot is in chronological order; you follow Cady through her first few weeks in public school. The external conflict in the film starts when Janice, Damian and Cady think it would be funny to have Cady become a Plastic for a week, and spy on them. Which in this movie also appears to be a dramatic irony because Cady which has never been socialized having been home-schooled all her life naively goes along with the plan and keeps digging herself, deeper and deeper into the drama of her high school jungle, which she is clueless about at first? After Regina, the leader or Queen Bee kisses the boy Cady has a crush on. Cady, Janice and Damian get revenge on her, in this portion of the film the director uses a satire and dramatic irony to make the pranks exaggerated and humorous to the audience such as feeding Regina Kalteen bars, which make you gain weight, and giving Regina foot cream for her face to supposedly help her skin clear up.

Things get so bad, that Regina is kicked out of the Plastics, making room for a new Queen Bee. Gretchen and Karen now pick Cady as their new Queen Bee. Cady becomes a Plastic and Regina gets revenge by writing about herself in the “Burn Book”, copying all of the entries, throwing them around the school hallways , then blaming the whole thing on Cady, Gretchen and Karen.