Mean Girls: Blu-ray Disc Movie Review (2009)

Directed by Mark Waters, written by Tina Fey, based on the book "Queen Bees and Wannabes" by Rosalind Wiseman, 93 minutes, rated PG-13.

Pop culture has taught us plenty about mean girls. Mean girls are controlling, crafty and insincere. They're sexually promiscuous and duplicitous, vain kittens who use their feminine wiles to reach higher positions of social status while, in the process, striving toward some sort of empty notoriety.

It's just that stereotype that is bolstered in Mark Waters' "Mean Girls," a funny satire now out on Blu-ray disc that's peppered with a few savage insights into how cruel teen girls can be to one another. The movie isn't as mean as it could have been--it's no "Election," for instance--but it does make its point that girl fighting can get downright dirty if the opportunities present themselves.

The movie stars Lindsay Lohan before she became a tabloid train wreck. Here, she's 16-year-old Cady Heron, a nice girl who has been home-schooled her entire life until her family moves from Africa to Illinois.

There at her new high school, she is befriended first by Goth geeks Janis (Lizzy Kaplan) and Damian (Daniel Frazese) before her good looks attract the Plastics, a trio of mean girls led by the vicious Regina (Rachel McAdams).

When Janis and Damian convince Cady to infiltrate the group and get the goods on the girls, she does so blindly yet willingly--and thus unwittingly sets herself up for the seductive pull of popularity and finds out what it takes for some to achieve it and how ugly it can be to maintain it.

The movie was written by Tina Fey, who also co-stars as Ms. Norbury, a math professor caught in the passive-aggressive cattiness that unfolds when Cady's meddling interferes with the all-important high school hierarchy.

It's Fey's examination of that peculiar caste system that gives "Mean Girls" the layers a lesser film would have lacked. She knows the ridiculous importance placed on who sits where in the cafeteria, for instance, and she knows that social suicide in high school can be committed merely by acknowledging the wrong person. Fey sees the humor in that, but she also sees the danger, the absurdity and the pain it can cause.

As such, "Mean Girls," in all its episodic parts, has the air of a memoir, and it likely will feel sufficiently familiar to some of those who watch.

Grade: B+

Features:
Commentary By Director Mark Waters, Screenplay Writer & Actress Tina Fey, And Producer Lorne Michaels
3 Featurettes:
- Only The Strong Survive
- The Politics Of Girl World
- Plastic Fashion
Word Vomit (Blooper Reel)
So Fetch - Deleted Scenes With Commentary
3 Interstitals
- Frenemies
- New Girl
- PSA
Theatrical Trailer

View the trailer for "Mean Girls" here: