By John Corrado

It’s been twenty years since Tina Fey released her high school satire Mean Girls in 2004, and now we have a new version of the modern teen classic being released in theatres.

Directed by Samantha Jayne and Arturo Perez Jr. (taking over for Mark Waters who directed the 2004 film), the 2024 version of Mean Girls serves as both a remake of the earlier film and an adaptation of the Broadway musical from a few years ago.

While Fey, who returns to write the screenplay and reprises her role as calculus teacher Mrs. Norbury, offers a few modern updates, the film feels very much like a remake. It’s not as fresh or iconic as the original, but still pretty enjoyable on its own terms as a spirited high school musical.

The story and characters remain the same; Cady Heron (Angourie Rice) is a homeschooled girl living in Kenya who gets dropped into the American school North Shore High, where she goes head-to-head with Queen Bee Regina George (Reneé Rapp). Regina is the leader of The Plastics, which is the name that outcasts Janice (Auli’i Cravalho) and Damien (Jaquel Spivey) have given her and her friends Gretchen Wieners (Bebe Wood) and Karen Shetty (Aventika).

The Plastics have various rules about who can sit with them at lunch and what to wear (“on Wednesdays we wear pink“). Janice and Damien are the first to welcome new girl Cady, but they hatch a scheme to have her ingratiate herself to The Plastics, as a way to get intel on the popular group. But the plan is complicated by Cady’s feelings for Aaron Samuels (Christopher Briney), the cute guy in her calc class who happens to be Regina’s ex-boyfriend.

Save for a number of musical numbers taken from the stage show to help move the story forward, this is a copy; right down to the film replicating iconic moments and lines in a way that makes it feel somewhat like a cover song at times. But it’s somewhat preferable to Fey trying to reinvent the wheel and change what worked so well the first time around. Fey’s lightly updated script features a handful of vaguely meta callbacks to the original film, a text that it treats with reverence (“Fetch” is now “something from an old movie” that Gretchen is trying to revive).

The songs feature some clunky lyrics here and there, but get away with it by bordering on parody, and the new jokes and one-liners mostly land. Social media and cellphone cameras, which were still in their infancy in 2004, also obviously have a larger presence here. But the messages and cautionary tale quality of the story remains fully intact, with Cady’s efforts to take down Regina threatening to turn her into the very thing she hates.

If the original film’s cast was a little stronger overall, the new cast does a fine job of filling out these well-established roles. Rice is clearly channelling Lindsey Lohan, but still able to put enough of her own spin on Cady to carry the film. The same could be said of Rapp as Regina, who has pretty big shoes to fill taking over from Rachel McAdams, but brings her own level of meanness to the role. Spivey also makes the role of “too gay to function” Damien his own, with the character being even louder and prouder than he could have been in 2004.

The question remains if Mean Girls – a film that enjoys an enduring pop culture legacy – actually needed a remake. But this new version is more entertaining than it had any right to be, especially for a film being released in the doldrums of January. The new cast is decent, and the musical numbers are mostly fun. Even if if it doesn’t quite reach the same heights as the 2004 film, I had a good time with it overall, and fans should enjoy revisiting classic moments in a new way.

Film Rating: ★★½ (out of 4)

Mean Girls opens exclusively in theatres on January 12th.