You already knew it, and you were right: Mean Girls is inimitable, sorry about the remake

$130 million at the box office, a musical on Broadway, almost daily inspirations gif, jokes we know by heart, or even a wink from Ariana Grande. The aura of the iconic Bad Girls East too profitable not to attract the attention of manufacturers. Less than twenty years after the 2005 film, what had to happen happened: Paramount came with a new version, which we want to go see if only for understand what he found to add to the original film.

Mean Girls, what is it?

After growing up in Kenya, Cady Heron arrives at a new high school, where she immediately comes into contact with the social elite. “Plastic”, led by their queen Regina George and her servants Gretchen and Karen. But when Cady develops a crush on Aaron, she doesn’t immediately realize she’s just made a big mistake…her new friend will turn into an enemy. Cady sets out to overthrow the established order with the help of her underdog friends, Janis and Damian. Will he be able to impose his rules in the merciless jungle of high school?

Being feminist, queer and anti-racist means being less fun and less creative. Truly ?

At the helm of Bad Girls, we find the screenwriter of the original teen film, Tina Fey, taking on her role, as well as that of producer. While the iconic quartet from the 2005 film leaves room for relatively little-known actresses, the lead presence of queer singer Renée Rapp was still enough to pique our curiosity. And we were right: because she infuses a “Bad bitch energy” truly embodied and worthy of the first filmRenée Rapp is almost the only bright spot in this trainwreck that borders on indigestion.

While there was little to sink our teeth into other than Rapp’s furious looks and incredible titles, one question haunted us as we watched the film. To what extent is the goose that lays the golden eggs Barbie Did it make some investors want to try a rosy heist again?

In fact, it’s impossible not to think about it 50 shades of pink of Greta Gerwig’s masterpiece in front of the marketing campaign of Bad Girls. Especially because the links between the two films don’t stop there. In fact we read it from the promotional campaign of this remake: the niche of the new Bad Girls, will be “less problematic” than the original. We were promised to re-release our tender film (and indeed the new version sometimes seems like a faithful copy of the original) in sweeping away its heteronormativity, its fatphobia and its racism.

The problem is that Bad Girls is one of those contemporary films that propagate the idea that Don’t be problematicit must be less fun, less cheeky and less creative. However, it is exactly the opposite – and Barbie is just one proof of this, among a number of other feminist works.

Mean Girls for children aged 5 to 10: a terrible idea

So, compare them it is never more enlightening than when we understand it Barbie AND Bad Girls they come perfect opposites. Where Greta Gerwig continually made us laugh or pushed us to celebrate as best we could the grand and complex nature of feminismthat we have to deal with every day the stupidity of masculinity and the filth of capitalism, Bad Girls, does not worry about these questions. In this remake, feminism is reduced to gay couples in the background, or three lines of dialogue “woke up” to which one might believe it was addressed 9 year old children.

Let’s take a concrete example, with this sequence Barbie where Ken plays the guitar and sings smiling in front of Barbie. This is when the camera moves backwards and shows us dozens of guys doing the same thing to girls. With a show simple and cheekyWho replaces dialogue with laughter and discomfortGreta Gerwig makes us experiment the absurdity of mansplainingwhich is also as grotesque as it is stupid and evil.

Now let’s take the example of Bad Girls : In one scene, Caddy makes Aaron think she’s bad at math to please him. How do you solve this feminist problem? With this sentence from her friend: “No Caddy, you don’t have to make Aaron think you’re bad at math to make him feel smart, that’s not feminist!” ». Depressing, isn’t it?

Where the film had an avenue to reinvent humor Bad Girls 2005, prefers to show characters so caricatured that they appear to have been subjected to a scanner 100 times, to make them as smooth as possible. To make up for this lack of strength and embodiment, the film wallows in an avalanche of hard-to-follow TikTok references and unfunny jokes, which quickly follow each other so as not to make us dwell on them.

The “woke” guarantee of the film is even less accepted Bad Girls makes some very bizarre casting choices. Although he affirms his progressivism, the queer and racialized characters remain confined to the backgroundwhile the central love story takes place between two white, heterosexual characters (who, between us, look too much alike physically.)

And, we admit it, we would have liked Caddy to capture Regina, because she’s objectively much fresher and more interesting than sad Aaron. It would have been a Bad Girls 2024 that bangs.

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