In the rebooted Mean Girls, calling someone a lesbian is no longer an insult, making yourself seem stupid to attract a boy is called out, and all the racism is thankfully absent. But this was a nerdy imitation of greatness, writes FLORA GILL

It’s a Wednesday and I’m about to watch the 2024 remake of Mean Girls. So, of course, I’m wearing pink. If you don’t know why, then you must somehow, inexplicably, have missed the funniest cult film of the early noughties.

For my generation, Mean Girls was iconic. Brilliantly skewering the cliques of a US high school, the 2004 original followed the efforts of new girl Cady Heron as she tried to fit in. I was 14 when it came out, and it felt to me and my friends like the first real film about our age group.

We were too young when hits like Clueless and Pretty in Pink were released, and the characters in contemporary films like Legally Blonde were all in college – past the age when school gossip can make or break you. I was not one of the cool girls at school and, like most people my age, had experienced first-hand the pain of peers talking about you behind your back.

So I raced to see Mean Girls with a gaggle of friends. I could pretend that it resonated for its waspish commentary on the societal expectations placed on teenage girls – but really it was just very, very funny. It struck such a chord that my best friend came dressed as Cady to my 18th birthday. October 3 (the day on which Cady’s crush asks her what date it is, now known as ‘Mean Girls Day’) will forever stand out in my diary, and I still quote lines from the film – a proud ‘You go, Glen Coco’ or a disappointed ‘Boo, you whore’ can apply to so many situations. I’ve recently used both in response to friends telling me they’re doing Dry January.

But now 33 – ironically a year older than Amy Poehler was when playing the ‘cool mom’ in the original – I take my seat in the cinema unsure what to expect, or who this reboot is really aimed at.

Like Matilda and The Color Purple, Mean Girls has gone from being a well-loved film to a hit stage musical… and then back to being a film of the musical. From the trailer you might not realise this. In fact, viewers in America have complained of being tricked into watching the film with no clue it contained singing.

Not that all musical adaptations are bad. Generally speaking I’m a huge fan, yet I’ve learnt they can make a much-loved story far better (as with Les Miserables) or far worse (I will never get back those two hours I spent watching Lord of the Rings: The Musical). So I was left wondering how close to the original this song-filled remake would be.

The answer? This is an almost scene-for-scene reprise of the original, only set in the 2020s.

There’s no risk of spoilers, because either you’ve seen the original (and so will be familiar with 60 per cent of the new film’s script) or you haven’t – in which case you should skip the remake and watch the 2004 version instead.

The problem, ironically, is that the same creative hands are on both. When Matilda The Musical was being made, you had the quirky genius of comedian Tim Minchin at the tiller to offer a fresh perspective to the 1996 Danny DeVito film adaptation of Roald Dahl’s classic.

But this is a musical film by Tina Fey, adapted from a stage musical by Tina Fey, which in itself was adapted from a film by Tina Fey.

It’s as if she’s simply looked at her work on the original and decided: ‘This is all hilarious, let’s keep it all in.’ Unfortunately, as the film goes on, for a superfan like me this smacks of boredom-inducing laziness rather than a recap of comic genius.

Practically every good moment is a carbon copy from 20 years ago; there are almost no new delights for me to enjoy and embrace. Indeed it feels less like a reboot than a nerdy imitation of greatness. It was like the kids from High School Musical were putting on a Mean Girls play.

The singing was good, I’ll give it that; Reneé Rapp, who plays Regina George, and Auli’i Cravalho (previously known for voicing Moana in the Disney film) who plays Janice were the breakaway stars, and I fully expect to see their meteoric rise. But their singing is much better than the songs. I’m sure watching the stage show live in a theatre is magical, but that doesn’t come across on screen, where the production values felt no more impressive than a season finale of TV show Glee.

I was done by halfway through, and ready to walk when chief Mean Girl Regina George finally got hit by the bus.

You might think that none of this would bother today’s teenagers. Yet, like many of Gen Z, my 16-year-old sister Edith is obsessed with nineties and noughties culture (she’s watched Friends more times than I have). So I suspect this non-reboot won’t wash with them either.

On the plus side, the producers have modernised the setting well. There is a world where they could have turned the film’s ‘Burn Book’ (a bitchy scrapbook of photos and snide comments about the titular Mean Girls’ schoolmates) into a Twitter account and had them all voting for who had the most ‘rizz’ (that’s ‘charisma’ to the over-40s) at the end-of-year dance. But astutely it’s only the ‘cool mom’ that is desperately throwing around modern slang like ‘slay’ and her own new hashtag.

Instead, the updates are subtle – the to-camera pieces from the original work perfectly now as TikToks, and there are even a couple of cameos from well-known influencers. Then of course there are other welcome corrections to mark changing sensibilities: calling someone a lesbian is no longer an insult, making yourself seem stupid to attract a boy is called out, and all the overt racism of the first film is thankfully absent.

Despite my criticisms, I still enjoyed myself. Half my love for the original is in my memories of watching it with my friends, of having a shared lexicon. I was never going to watch the first film in the cinema with my little sister, but I will take her to see this version, warts and all. Anything that can drag us both away from our respective devices and get us to make a memory over cartons of popcorn is totally fetch in my book.