Mean Girls is a rollicking dark comedy about the insidious dangers of peer pressure.
It is also a homage to some of the classic youth comedies of the past, including Heathers, Clueless, The Breakfast Club and Pretty in Pink.
Cady Heron (Lindsay Lohan) was home schooled in Africa, where her parents were studying wildlife.
In Cady's senior year, the family returns to Chicago and Cady finds herself in her first regular school.
It's not long before she sees scary similarites between the African jungle and the jungle that is public school.
There are cliques every where, from the jocks and cheerleaders, to the artsy types and math geeks.
Ruling them all are The Plastics, a trio of self-style queen bees whose stings are deadly.
Regina (Rachel McAdams) rules the little hive and is essentially as cruel to her two toadying friends as she is to most of her classmates.
Cady is instantly ostracized because she's a stranger but finally finds solace and friendship with a pair of outsiders, the punkish Janis Ian (Lizzy Caplan) and the flamboyantly gay Damien (Daniel Franzese).
These new buddies convince Cady to help them destroy The Plastics, but it isn't long before Cady is seduced into becoming the fourth member of that clique.
Mean Girls takes the edgy insighfulness of Heathers, balances it with the frivolity of Clueless, and then throws in numerous little references to the old John Hughes teen comedies of the '80s.
Perhaps the most surprising thing is that Mean Girls is based a series self-help book for parents called Queen Bees and Wannabees.
It was adapted for the screen by Saturday Night Live's Tina Fey, who gives the advice a comic twist and spices it all up with some funny physical comedy and a host of great one-liners.
Mark Waters, who directed Lohan in last year's youth hit Freaky Friday, knows how to get excellent performances from his young cast members, as well as veteran comics.
As the nasty trio, McAdams, Lacey Chabert and Amanda Seyfried are a cross between Barbie dolls and scorpions. They're caricatures but they're definitely effective.
Tim Meadows (also of SNL) is hilarious as the principal who tries to take back control of his school by turning into Morgan Freeman from 1989's Lean on Me.
Caplan does a great Winona Ryder impersonation as the outsider with a personal grudge against Regina, and Franzese throws subtlety to the wind in his portrayal of the school's reigning raging homosexual.
Jonathan Bennett has the thankless role of the high school hunk who becomes the trophy Cady and Regina fight over, but he brings more real drama to the role than would ever be expected.
The target audience for Mean Girls is definitely young women, yet it's clever enough not to alienate male viewers or adults.
There are laughs and lessons in this one for everyone, which is why it goes straight to the head of the class.
(This film is rated PG)
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