One of the best parts of movies as a means to human experience is legacy. There are certain movies that are best described as timeless classics, those movies that will remain a staple to people from when they were made to almost 100 years later. We see this with films like It’s a Wonderful Life or The Shining. But these films don’t have to simply be holiday favorites. A movie that fits under this idea of legacy and is ultra-popular is Tina Fey’s Mean Girls.
This movie is one of the defining films of the early 2000s era. It stars Rachel McAdams and Lindsay Lohan in their primes and offers a story that had never been told before, and one that’s still being told today. In high school, there are cliques. Everyone who’s experienced it knows it, and there is this innate desire to understand and be a part of the popular group. The school-wide famous kids. The mean girls. But the idea of this glamorous life isn’t as pretty as it seems, which this movie makes sure to show its audience. Cady Heron is the new girl, freshly moved to town from Africa with her parents who makes friends with the weird kids in the school, Janice and Ian. In an attempt to mess with the mean girls, Grechin, Karen and the it girl Regina George, Cady winds up
going in too deep becoming the thing she set out to undermine. We see betrayals in friendships, the breaking of girl code in relationships, and the destroying of one’s true self to be their version of you that you think everybody loves, but in reality hates.
Mean Girls is a movie that never gets old in the countless rewatches you can go through. The comedy is beyond iconic as well as its characters and dialogue. There are sounds from this movie that still trend every year, especially around Halloween time. The film has been made into a Broadway play that’s been and continues to be wildly successful as well as a musical remake in film form which came out last year. While these newer attempts to relive the glory of the original Mean Girls are cool and innovative, the original classic will always prevail as the most iconic version of the story.
Mean Girls is a movie to make you laugh but to show you the deeper more meaningful picture of our lives and the choices we make, and meaninglessness of this thing we call high school popularity. People may be obsessed with you, but they won’t ever like you. People may want to be you, but they don’t want to know you. You may have power, but you also don’t have any real connections or friends. The people that see you when no one else does or cares for you are the ones you need to value. Cady learns this lesson with Janice and Ian and shows the audience how quickly one can lose themselves trying to be liked. Instead of being liked, everyone just knows the name of the girl they hate. This movie is deep and true, iconic and hilarious, and definitely a classic recommended to anyone who hasn’t seen it.
