Is the musical 'Mean Girls' fetch, or is it never going to happen? : Pop Culture Happy Hour
Linda Holmes
Mean Girls is a film adaptation of the Broadway adaptation of the beloved Lindsay Lohan and Tina Fey comedy. The songs are there, the dances are there, and the nasty, nasty high school drama is there. But does the retelling capture the energy, the style, and the jokes of the original? The new cast includes Reneé Rapp, Auliʻi Cravalho, and Angourie Rice.
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NPR
LINDA HOLMES, HOST:

It can feel at times like there's no movie that can't be made into a Broadway musical and no such Broadway musical that can't be made back into a movie. The latest project to get this treatment is "Mean Girls," a film adaptation of the Broadway adaptation of the beloved Lindsay Lohan comedy.

GLEN WELDON, HOST:

The songs are there. The dances are there. And the nasty, nasty high school drama is there. But does this retelling capture the energy, the style and the jokes of the original? I'm Glen Weldon.

HOLMES: And I'm Linda Holmes, and today we're talking about "Mean Girls." And we are making fetch happen on POP CULTURE HAPPY HOUR from NPR. Joining me in Glen today is Wailin Wong. She's the co-host of NPR's daily economics podcast, The Indicator From Planet Money. Welcome back, Wailin.

WAILIN WONG, BYLINE: Thank you - former mathlete reporting for duty.

HOLMES: Oh, fabulous. Me, too. Me, too.

WELDON: Oh, God.

HOLMES: Also with us is Andrew Limbong. He's the host of NPR's Book Of The Day podcast and a reporter for the culture desk - always great to have you, Andrew.

ANDREW LIMBONG, BYLINE: Yo. What's up? What's up?

HOLMES: Well, "Mean Girls" tells the story of Cady, played here by Angourie Rice, who starts her very first year at an American high school after being homeschooled in Africa by her mother. She falls in with a couple of offbeat outcasts - Janis, played by Auli'i Cravalho, and Damien, played by Jacquel Spivey. But before long, she also meets the Plastics, the mean girl clique presided over by Regina George, played here by Renee Rapp. The songs in the film, like the ones in the show, have music by Jeff Richmond, who's the husband and longtime collaborator of Tina Fey, and lyrics by Nell Benjamin, though a bunch of songs were cut and one was added. And Fey wrote the screenplay here, as she did for the original film. Mean girls is in theaters now. Wailin, I want to start with you. What did you think?

WONG: I liked it, it was a lot of fun. I really love the original, and so I do go in with that kind of looming large in my cultural imagination, in my inner life. Like, I think this movie means a lot, has really shaped my inner life in a lot of ways. And I was looking for this version to kind of deliver another layer of meaning, make me think about the themes in a different way. Or I wanted the musical element of it to really enhance the story and kind of open up my understanding in a new way that way. And I don't think it totally got there for me, but I did have a lot of fun. I will say I wanted more set pieces, more musical set pieces. I think they cut some of the songs from the musical.

HOLMES: A lot.

WELDON: They cut.

HOLMES: Yeah.

WONG: And I could have used all those songs back in the movie. Like, if they were going to make a movie musical, I wanted full movie musical, you know? Like, the movie ends at a school dance, and I wanted a huge choreographed number at the end, like at the end of "She's All That." Like, that's what I was looking for. And they end up, I think, being, like, kind of restrained in how much music they integrate. So I kind of wanted it to go bigger, but I did enjoy the music they did have in there. I loved seeing Tina Fey and Tim Meadows come back, and I, like, cackled throughout at a lot of the writing - some of the lines obviously repeated from the original but still hilarious and then some of the new writing, too. I thought it was really funny. I had a lot of fun.

HOLMES: Did you feel like you needed that choreographed number at the end to be "Rockefeller Skank," or could it have been something else?

(LAUGHTER)

WONG: I like "Rockefeller Skank." I think I just wanted, like, the whole gym singing and dancing...

HOLMES: Yeah.

WONG: ...In a much more kind of...

HOLMES: Yeah.

WONG: ...Movie musical, this-is-a-movie-musical kind of a way.

HOLMES: Or you were looking for - like, or the - like, the "Thriller" dance in "13 Going On 30." Yeah.

WONG: Yeah.

HOLMES: All right.

WONG: Yeah.

HOLMES: Andrew, I saw you at this screening. I know you were there. What did you think?

LIMBONG: You know, didn't need it, but I'm glad it exists. I like watching it. I agree a hundred percent with Wailin. I think the pacing is wonky. I did want more, like, "like High School Musical." I did want, like, kids doing flips and, like, crazy stuff happening, some more, like, dancy, set-piecey (ph) things. But other than that, I think there is a weight of it. It has the albatross of the original hanging over its neck in a not super-good way, you know, and it doesn't deal with it. I think there's a lot of - the memorable lines that we all, like, know and love from the original "Mean Girls" - they get delivered in a way in this movie in a very knowing fashion. It's, like, circled. We know that you know this line, and so we're telling you that we know. And it really kind of beleaguered the movie a bit.

And, Linda, our screening was packed with, like, "Mean Girls" fans. And I don't remember any of these lines, you know? And I'm talking about, like, making fetch happen or, like, ex-boyfriends are off limits. That's the rules of feminism. Like, those kind of lines we all know - I don't remember, like, them getting any big laughs from, like, the full-on stans that were at our screening, right?

HOLMES: I think there were a couple that maybe did.

WELDON: Yeah.

HOLMES: But I agree with you that the reaction was a little bit muted to those things. And one of the things I thought about is that, you know, it feels to me like a fan project. And I don't say that, like, as a dig. Many fan projects are wonderful. But I don't know how much sense this movie would make outside the context of having watched and being a fan of the original movie. I think the story wouldn't necessarily hang together terribly well, and I think thematically, I'm not sure it would. It feels like a tribute to the original movie in a way that's kind of, I think, exactly what you're talking about. Those kind of familiar lines are really underlined. Glen, what did you think?

WELDON: Well, I really dug this, which surprised me because I came into this movie with a kind of a chip on my shoulder. I'm coming at this movie from a much different place than you two, Wailin and Andrew, because I come from a much older place. I saw the original movie in theaters. I came out of it thinking, this is fine, but it's not "Heathers." And the 1988 film "Heathers" is a high school dark comedy that's actually dark, right? And it's also, not for nothing - for whatever reason, it's the high school film that I imprinted on. It became part of my personality - still is, still cling to it. And between that and "Buffy," I have often felt that everything that needs to be said about high school has been said.

But when I was a good gay uncle and I did my civic duty and I took my niece and sister-in-law to the musical "Mean Girls" on Broadway, I came out of it thinking, that was fine, but it's still not "Heathers." And it has no memorable songs. I mean, they were generic musical theater songs, but they felt so Broadway that it was like watching, like, a Broadway pastiche - the kind that you'd see on "30 Rock," say. Or, like, you know when people say, well, let's improv a musical, and they do the same three chord progressions, and you're like, oh, they kind of nailed it, actually?

So why did I like this so much better? Well, the stage production was 2.5 hours with intermission. This was a little over an hour and a half. Am I that simple and basic and predictable? Yes, yes and yes, turns out.

LIMBONG: Nothing wrong with that, dude (laughter). Yeah.

WELDON: I mean, look. I also think it works because we cut some of those really forgettable songs, and we worked the others that had potential on Broadway that I don't think their production tapped into. So every song gets a pop makeover instead of a Broadway jazz-handy thing. And that gives the songs an energy that I think was lacking on Broadway. Now, you could argue they're pretty generic pop songs, the way that the stage production had pretty generic Broadway tunes, but they just work better.

And they did other smart things. They got rid of Cady's dad, who didn't add anything. They gave Cady a new, and, I think, much better opening I want song because in that opening one song in the Broadway show, which I think was called "It Roars," she came off as kind of a jerk. And here, in the song called "What Ifs," she's just nicer, and so we get a better arc for her. Like, she got more places to go. I just thought the re-imagining of the show really worked really well.

HOLMES: Yeah. I preferred the songs in this that were the more Broadway-like songs, some of which remind me a lot, specifically, of Jason Robert Brown, who wrote "The Last Five Years" and some other things. The songs that are a little more lyrically dense, the songs that have kind of playful lyrics, I enjoyed a lot. Her little song about falling in love in math class, I thought was cute. That I want song at the beginning I think is cute - not as much the big, like, super-serious, we're taking on a major pop song. And that comes out specifically, I think - and this was kind of my biggest struggle, I think, with this film, is the way that they imagine Regina George in this movie is very different from the Regina George that I know from the original movie, which is fine. It's not as if, you know, whoever did this doesn't understand the original movie, right? These are all choices. But the choice here is to present Regina much more - I mean, to me, she's going full, like...

WELDON: Disney villain.

HOLMES: ...She's going full, like, lead in a '90s erotic thriller...

WONG: (Laughter).

HOLMES: ...Where she's going to murder people. It's really heavy. Like, there's a lot more, like, black leather and sort of - it doesn't, to me, capture quite the insidious nature of those relationships, the way that my initial sense of Regina George did. This Regina is never being nice to your face. She's always just being a huge, terrifying bully all the time. And to me, it took away a little bit from - you know, in the original movie, Cady talks about how the more she sort of is mean to Gretchen and Karen, the more they want to please her. And I don't think you get that here. They go pretty quickly into the poor Gretchen and poor Karen. Like, that's all hit very hard, including, like, a whole song at the beginning that's just Gretchen talking about how sad she is, which I think - I like it better when that arises a little more slowly.

So I respect what everybody did here. I think a couple of the songs are really fun, little, like, poppy-type things, although they do remind me a lot of other Broadway. But I don't - this vision of Regina George, despite how talented Renee Rapp is - and let me underline that part - it just was not my favorite way to envision this character.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WORLD BURN")

RENEE RAPP: (As Regina George, singing) My name is Regina George, and I am a massive deal. I will grind you to sand beneath my Louboutin heel.

LIMBONG: I think she could kill me, you know? Like, will murder me with a knife - and quite literally. And I enjoy that change of dynamic. But in the sort of third act, when Cady gets the upper hand, that's where the math of who's on top and who's scary and who's intimidating doesn't quite, like, line up - right? - because this version of Cady does the innocent part really well. But her, like, mean streak is more indifferent than having, like, a sort of sense of agency and choosing to be mean.

HOLMES: Yeah.

LIMBONG: And so then we're stuck with, like, you know, in a very - someone's still on the upper ground, and it's still Regina by the third act, if that makes sense.

WELDON: I thought, you know, Rachel McAdams was believably mean, but Renee Rapp is a Disney villain. She's big. She is completely fitting. I think that's the form. The form is this is a musical. Emotions are heightened. You have to play to the back of the house, even if that house is a movie house. I thought it fit, and I thought, you have to make different connections and do different work.

I particularly want to shout out Avantika, who plays Karen, the dumb one, because playing the dumb one is, on the surface, very easy to do, but it's very difficult to do without leaning into stuff that everyone who's ever played a dumb character has done. I thought she located something very specific and very funny. And in the song "Sexy," which is the song about Halloween costumes, she is just - she's just having such a great time, and that song is a banger.

LIMBONG: And that's set piece hit, like, right when I was, like, looking at my watch. Like, we need a big number right about now. Yeah.

WONG: I wanted to shout out Auli'i Cravalho and Jaquel Spivey. I loved them as Janice and Damian. And Auli'i Cravalho in particular, I thought, really brought something to this. I really enjoyed watching her. She opens the whole movie with a very strong kind of almost, like, Greek chorus-type number, and I really, really enjoyed watching her. And I don't think I'd seen her in anything since, like "Moana." So I was like, oh, hey. It's Moana as Janis Ian. I loved it.

HOLMES: Yeah. And I think Jaquel Spivey, too - Damian is such, to me, a beloved take on the sort of - what can be a very stereotypical gay best friend, right? And I think what I love about this is that there's more than one way to be a broad characterization of a gay best friend. And I think this is one that also works, even though it's in a lot of ways quite different and, I think, sells the heck out of it, you know? I enjoyed that part a lot.

LIMBONG: I want to say, Tim Meadows - doing hero's work. I did some research. I watched the unknown movie "Mean Girls 2," the direct-to-Freeform...

WELDON: Oh, boy. Oh, boy. That's over and above the call of duty.

WONG: Whoa, really?

LIMBONG: He holds it together (laughter). It's, like...

WONG: He's in that? He's in "Mean Girls 2"?

LIMBONG: Yeah.

WONG: Oh, my gosh.

LIMBONG: Yeah. He's the only good part of that movie. But I was, like, wow, this man is really committed to this character. And I got to really respect that.

WELDON: Can I ask you about something that struck me? And I - this is probably in the original movie. I don't recall. I only saw it once. But there's an assembly where the Tina Fey character talks to the girls about how girls are mean to girls. And they get a stern talking-to, and there's trust exercises. And I understand that's the whole - that's everything - what this movie is. It's called "Mean Girls." It just felt like - that was kind of a circular firing squad, right? And, like, there's 50% of the population of this high school that are being meaned to, right? And I just felt - I don't know. That's one of those things of the connective tissue that - that didn't connect for me. But I - you know, that's the whole point of the film, right?

HOLMES: I think the farther you get down that road to, like, everything, as you mentioned, Glen, getting bigger and more literally theatrical, the harder it is to then make that turn and try to have a semi-serious conversation. I think the big, big, bigger of the rest of it makes that turn a little harder than it is in the original film.

WONG: I think another kind of tough thing about landing that scene and really selling it is that, you know, since this is a modern film, they layer in the social media aspect to it and the smartphone aspect of it, which is obviously absent in the original because of the time in which it came out. And I don't think this movie does anything to reckon with the harm that would be amplified by social media in those same situations. I mean, I appreciated that they still kept a paper, analog burn book, but they layer all this social media stuff on top, where you see that kids are posting, like, on their TikTok accounts about what's happening in school. And, you know, not to make this into, like, a realistic docudrama about, you know, a school actually falling apart over bullying, but they lean into the kind of fun aspects of social media to do these montages, which I did think were really well done, but they don't talk about what that would do to, again, magnify the harm caused by these in-person interactions.

And I feel like there was an opportunity in that assembly scene to maybe deal with some of that, and then that would make this film feel more present, more kind of addressing modern-day dynamics. And instead, they just kind of do a recreation of what happens in the original, which was already kind of an after-school special way to deal, I think, with a lot of these issues. But then again, if you are going big, and this is the Broadwayization (ph) or whatever of this story, then you don't really have any choice but to do kind of, like, a big assembly with, like, every cast member on stage.

HOLMES: Yeah. I think that's right. When you get into these conversations, it's easy to feel - as I do right now - like, you want to say, look. I do get that it's supposed to be fun and big and funny and broad, and it's not, as you said, a docudrama. But I think there is an effort to have it both ways, at least a little bit, and to be saying something at least a little bit actually resonant about what school is like for a certain percentage of kids. But listen - shoutout to the mathletes...

(LAUGHTER)

HOLMES: ...As someone who went to a national math competition only because my school was in Delaware. You know, I appreciate the love of math. As I said, everybody in this is really talent. I think Angourie Rice, who is taking over such a famous part here as the people who played this role in Broadway did, does an absolutely fine job. It's - it was an up-and-down experience for me. I enjoyed parts of it, but I was a little meh on the final product.

WONG: I don't know if you guys noticed the weird amount of product placement. Well, it felt weird to me. It actually took me out of the movie at certain points. There was, like, a point where Cady is using a compact, and she's applying some kind of lip product, and you see the logo for the cosmetics company prominently on the compact. And then someone says, what product is that? And she says, it's the e.l.f. lip blah, blah, blah, which is probably a product I can buy right now.

HOLMES: I did notice. I did...

WONG: Yeah.

HOLMES: ...Notice the e.l.f. thing, now that you mention it.

WONG: And then at the math competition, they say, oh, this math competition is sponsored by SeatGeek. And then the Kevin character shouts out, yeah, SeatGeek. And I was like, am I watching an infomercial? It was very funny to me, and I'm, like, is...

HOLMES: That's a good point.

WONG: What are the economics of this movie? You know, why - was it - were they contractually obligated not only to display a logo but to actually say the name of the company, too, and then something nice about it? It was very odd to me.

LIMBONG: I did think the SeatGeek thing was a joke because it seemed like something Kevin, as, I assume, a guy who listens to podcasts...

(LAUGHTER)

LIMBONG: ...You know, like, that brand of podcast would definitely use.

(LAUGHTER)

HOLMES: It does seem clear that there was some - the SeatGeek thing went right by me 'cause I just thought that sounded like some random sponsor of a mathlete competition.

WELDON: Yeah.

HOLMES: So...

WELDON: True.

HOLMES: Well, I think that we all enjoyed this movie to some degree, and we want to know what you think about "Mean Girls." Find us on Facebook at facebook.com/pchh. Up next, What's Making Us Happy This Week.

Now it's time for our favorite segment of this week and every week, What's Making Us Happy This Week. Wailin, what's making you happy this week?

WONG: Well, I recently saw the movie "Maestro," and then that sent me down a rabbit hole of looking up old Leonard Bernstein videos on YouTube because it - he did all this television - right? - at the height of his career. He was doing all these television specials. And so what I've really enjoyed is Bernstein's Young People's Concerts, which...

HOLMES: Yes.

WONG: ...These were concerts that aired mostly in the '60s. He did them for years and years, I think, over a decade, and they're all on YouTube. And they're fabulous. I mean, he has such a great way of talking about classical music in an accessible way. He's super-telegenic, and I really enjoyed - he did one on Holst's "Planets," and he does another one that's an introduction to Mahler. And so I don't know. I just feel like a young Lydia Tar watching my Bernstein videos.

And, you know, the movie "Maestro" - you know, it's like about his marriage, but you don't get actually, like, a lot of him, like, conducting and actually doing music, right? They kind of keep that to a minimum 'cause they focus on the relationship. So then I find myself kind of missing that for "Maestro." So then I went to YouTube to just watch Leonard Bernstein being Leonard Bernstein, and I've been having a great time.

HOLMES: That is awesome - Leonard Bernstein Young People's Concerts available on YouTube. Thank you, Wailin. Andrew Limbong, what is making you happy this week?

LIMBONG: So I've been watching this YouTube channel called What Makes This Song Stink? It's by this guy named Pat Finnerty. I think from my research, he's just, like, a musician based out of Philly. And what he does is he makes these little essays that turn into something much bigger, right? They're nominally breaking down song writings of songs that stink. Some previous entries are, like, "Dani California" - right? - or, like, a Train song or, like, Three Doors Down, "Kryptonite," which, you know, I think is a great song, but, you know, that's neither here nor there.

What I like about this channel is that it's not just unadulterated hater energy. It's oddly quite positive about music and songs. And all the essays turn into just, like, things about something else, right? Like, this most recent episode, which is about the Jason Aldean song "Try That In A Small Town," which does sound like an easy target - but I think he breaks it down in such a way that you learn something new. And I think - there's, like, this clip - there's one moment where he takes the lyrics of the song and puts it to "Ohio," you know, an old classic standard, that I think is an example of the quirky way in which he's, like, not just tearing down and dumping on these songs but pointing a greater point out.

(SOUNDBITE OF YOUTUBE VIDEO, "WHAT MAKES THIS SONG STINK EP. 8 - 'TRY THAT IN A SMALL TOWN'")

PAT FINNERTY: (Singing) Try that in a small town. See how far you make it down the road.

LIMBONG: Yeah. And I think it's just an extremely funny way to spend - I think it's about an hour, but, like, it's a good hour. It's a solid hour.

HOLMES: So that's What Makes This Song Stink?, which you can find on YouTube. Thank you, Andrew. Glen Weldon, what is making you happy this week?

WELDON: Season 5 of "Fargo" just wrapped on FX and Hulu. This is creator Noah Hawley's anthology series. It's a black comedy. It's a crime drama. It's inspired by the Coen brothers' 1996 film, and every season has kind of, you know, referenced that film in different ways. But this season goes further. It is a series of very intentional riffs that engage and play with the film without relying on it. It's really satisfying.

The cast is stacked, including Juno Temple, who, if you know her from "Ted Lasso," where she played Keeley, and you start the season, hear her do that Minnesota accent - and you think, oh, she's going so broad. She's playacting. But damn if she does not dig in and really show you layers to that performance. The final episode of the season, there is a series of scenes between her and a character played by Sam Spruell, and their work together manages to sneak up to the theme of the original movie, which you know, has to do with how awful human beings can be to each other and how cruel and violent and hateful, but also that basic human decency has a power that can overcome all that.

And I do think the series is actually putting it forward sincerely. I'm in the tank for Noah Hawley. I was loving this season. And then Jennifer Jason Leigh shows up in a blunt-cut bob talking like William F. Buckley, and I just rolled over, and...

HOLMES: Yep.

WELDON: I rolled over for a belly rub is what I did. That is "Fargo," Season 5, on FX and Hulu.

HOLMES: All right. Thank you very much, Glen. What is making me happy this week is that I've been spending a lot of time with my new PS5, and one of the games that I've been playing is called "Two Point Campus." It is a sim game from a company that also made a game called "Two Point Hospital" that I liked. "Two Point Campus," your task is to build what's ultimately a series of college campuses and make them successful and highly regarded and, you know, full of happy students and fulfilled staff. You hire the professors. You hire the assistants and the janitors. Make sure you hire enough janitors, or the place gets really messy.

And it all sounds really dry, but they style it in a very cartoony style. So although you are genuinely trying to solve all these interlocking problems that are sort of like a big puzzle, which is one of the things I like about this kind of game, it's also - there's this underlying silliness to it because, you know, for instance, your training room for your staff has you put them into a big machine that looks like a brain. And if there's an on-campus party, if you zoom in, the students are doing, like, very funny dance moves. It's all very amusingly animated.

I so admire the wit that went into the presentation of it 'cause I had also finally played my way through "The Last Of Us," which is not a whimsical, fun, upbeat game. So I turned to this very silly cartoon campus sim, and it has been extremely joyful and fun. And it is making me happy this week.

If you want links for what we recommended plus some more recommendations, sign up for our newsletter. It's at npr.org/popculturenewsletter. That brings us to the end of our show. Wailin Wong, Andrew Limbong, Glen Weldon, thank you so much for being here.

WELDON: Thank you.

WONG: Thank you. It was fun.

LIMBONG: Thanks for having me.

HOLMES: Absolutely. You can all always sit with us. This episode was produced by Liz Metzger, Isabella Gomez Sarmiento. And it was edited by Jessica Reedy and Mike Katzif. Hello Come In provides our theme music. Thanks for listening to POP CULTURE HAPPY HOUR from NPR. I'm Linda Holmes, and we'll see you all next week.

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