Film Review: Mean Girls will deliver instant relief from the January blues

Adapted by Tina Fey from the stage musical based on the original Mean Girls film (2004), this iteration is good old-fashioned vicious fun 

Bebe Wood plays Gretchen, Renee Rapp plays Regina and Avantika plays Karen in Mean Girls from Paramount Pictures. Picture: Jojo Whilden/Paramount © 2023 Paramount Pictures.

• Mean Girls
• ★★★★☆
• Cinema release

Mean Girls (12A) opens with wide-eyed innocent Cady Heron (Angourie Rice) entering the jungle of North Shore High School, where the ‘Queen of the Beasts’ Regina George (Reneé Rapp) prowls the corridors marking her territory. 

Cady, as she informs us through the medium of song, is ‘smart with maths but stupid with love’, and when the new girl, previously home-schooled, makes the error of falling for Regina’s ex-boyfriend Aaron (Christopher Briney), claws are bared — but in tangling with Cady, has Regina bitten off more than she can chew? Adapted by Tina Fey from the stage musical based on the original Mean Girls film (2004), and directed by Samantha Jayne and Arturo Perez Jr, this iteration is good old-fashioned vicious fun.

Tina Fey plays Ms. Norbury in Mean Girls from Paramount Pictures. Picture: Jojo Whilden/Paramount © 2023 Paramount Pictures

Few of the songs are instantly hummable, but most of them are strong as they drive the story ever onwards: and while the attractive cast aren’t likely to trouble the voters at awards season, the Greek Chorus duo of Janis (Auli’i Cravalho) and Damian (Jaquel Spivey) tend to blow everyone else off the screen whenever they pop up. This sprightly, irreverent reboot should deliver instant relief from the January blues.