Get in loser

November 9, 2023 3:40 PM

We’re going to the movies. It’s going to be so fetch!

Get your burn book! It’s mean girls the musical… movie.*

* trailer has no reference to musical numbers

posted by St. Peepsburg (22 comments total)

Gretchen...
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 3:47 PM on November 9, 2023

So I was watching and the trailer just seems to make it look like an unnecessary movie, re-covering the same material, but the presence of Tina Fey giving some hope. Then this:

It’s mean girls the musical… movie.*

Trust your(my) instincts. Reject this abomination.
posted by biffa at 4:00 PM on November 9, 2023 [3 favorites]

For absolutely no reason, this reminded me that there was a The Producers the Musical the Movie back in (oh my god).
posted by General Malaise at 4:19 PM on November 9, 2023 [4 favorites]

I was fed through the Great Algorithm in the Sky a meme the other day, one that I cannot find now, that was a conversation between Liz Lemon and Jack Donaghy, and Liz called this trailer "Wonking", which is a trailer hiding that it's a musical, a la Wonka (the movie, the musical).

I hate musicals. Will probably see this anyway, because I don't hate fun.
posted by mcstayinskool at 4:36 PM on November 9, 2023

I love musicals and saw this on Broadway. I don't remember any of the songs. It's a problem that I thinks stems from Jeff Richmond coming from an improv / tv theme song background. The story and characters are so great though. I'm also of the opinion that live action movie musicals rarely work but hopefully it will be fun.
posted by Uncle at 4:50 PM on November 9, 2023

Aw man I can’t wait for this. My kid was in a local production of Mean Girls Jr (??!) last year; Revenge Party is so much fun.
posted by uncleozzy at 4:54 PM on November 9, 2023

This somehow being a musical is by far the most interesting thing about it to me; I don't really expect it to be a very *good* musical because it's way too easy for people to make something a musical as a bit than to write great music, but, hey, it's better than it just being literally a needless sequel/remake.

(On Wonkaing, here, is, regrettably, a twitter link that may be the source. This is also how *I* found out it's a musical, I guess.)

The thing that struck me watching the trailer was mostly that the thing most missing for me was Amanda Seyfried. Change everything else about the original and I guess I'm willing to shrug, but she was such an iconic turn as a dingbat in that, it's hard not to miss it in a recast.
posted by cortex at 5:12 PM on November 9, 2023 [2 favorites]

"this isn't your mother's mean girls" is an obscenely lazy tagline and yet it's also god-tier millennial social media bait, i hope some tiktok tweenfluencer got paid seven figures to come up with it without even looking up from her phone
posted by Gerald Bostock at 5:20 PM on November 9, 2023 [14 favorites]

I too saw this on Broadway and when I try to remember the songs they've been replaced in my mind with the songs from the off-Broadway Heathers musical – maybe because that show had more of the fantastic Barrett Wilbert Wade.
posted by nicwolff at 5:20 PM on November 9, 2023 [2 favorites]

October 3rd was just a month ago, how did they not have the trailer ready by then?

(The Heathers musical is definitely better but Mean Girls does still have some good notes, particularly Apex Predator and Sexy.)
posted by one for the books at 5:52 PM on November 9, 2023 [3 favorites]

(oh, and Revenge Party, that song's good too)
posted by one for the books at 6:17 PM on November 9, 2023

Trust your(my) instincts. Reject this abomination.

He doesn’t even go here.
posted by mochapickle at 6:38 PM on November 9, 2023 [3 favorites]

Based on the trailer, it looks *just* like "your mother's Mean Girls", like a scene-for-scene remake almost. What am I missing?
posted by splitpeasoup at 11:10 PM on November 9, 2023 [2 favorites]

My 11-year-old daughter is debuting in a local production of this on Sunday. As Kevin.
posted by gottabefunky at 12:20 AM on November 10, 2023 [8 favorites]

Why.
posted by rhymedirective at 6:07 AM on November 10, 2023

Like Caddyshack, I always found Mean Girls better to have watched than to watch; it's got a lot of great quotes and it's fun to reference, much more fun than I find actually watching it
posted by an octopus IRL at 6:11 AM on November 10, 2023 [1 favorite]

Based on the trailer, it looks *just* like "your mother's Mean Girls", like a scene-for-scene remake almost. What am I missing?

That this version is based on the musical - something the trailer doesn't make obvious, but if you do know that already, it becomes very apparent.

I enjoyed the musical a great deal (though like others, I don't remember the tunes at all.) The casting in this looks good (Angourie Rice was good in last year's Honor Society and showed that she can lead a movie. If you're going to recast Ana Gasteyer and Amy Poehler, Jenna Fischer and Busy Phillips are good calls there. Ashley Park, who we see in the trailer as the French Teacher, played Gretchen Weiners on Broadway, IIRC) and while this seems utterly unnecessary, I'm here for it regardless.
posted by Navelgazer at 8:16 AM on November 10, 2023 [1 favorite]

I watched this yesterday with bafflement. I get that some people hate musicals, but are people who hate musicals looking for a slavish remake of Mean Girls? The fact that it is a musical is the only reason it got made - why not include the musical numbers in the trailer for those of us who actually like musicals?
posted by Ben Trismegistus at 12:21 PM on November 10, 2023

My suspicion is that the studio is gunshy about selling this as a musical due to the failure of the far more off-putting Dear Evan Hansen movie, which was sorta like Mean Girls (i.e. an issues-based teen comedy about healthy socialization) but if it was written as the self-rationalizing fantasy of a teenage sociopath.
posted by Strange Interlude at 1:42 PM on November 10, 2023

Tina tryna EGOT?
posted by DeepSeaHaggis at 5:28 PM on November 10, 2023

Stop trying to make fetch happen. It's not going to happen.
posted by kirkaracha at 6:28 PM on November 11, 2023

I'm here for it. Did the Broadway musical need to exist? Absolutely not. Was seeing the touring production last year in a sea of women wearing pink a blast? Absolutely yes. This also does not need to exist, but I suspect it will also be a good time, and it'll be a lot cheaper to see than live theater. I did feel like the stage show stalls a bit in the second act, so hopefully they used this as an opportunity to tighten it up.

Mean Girls is one of my top comfort watch movies, and now I'm going to have "Apex Predator" stuck in my head for awhile.
posted by bowtiesarecool at 7:03 PM on November 12, 2023 [2 favorites]