Cady Heron (Angourie Rice) joins a new High School having moved from Kenya to America and must navigate through the cliques of students within. 

2004’s Mean Girls starring Lindsay Lohan and Rachel McAdams was such a beloved film that it was turned into a Broadway musical in 2018. This film is an adaptation of that musical which means 20 years since the original released in cinemas we now have the musical version. Both versions were written by Tina Fey based on the self help book Queen Bees and Wannabes by Rosalind Wiseman. So the result is a film that shares many scenes and line readings with the added bonus of some musical numbers. The question really will be whether those songs register with you and how much you will find yourself comparing to the original. 

The plot for those not familiar with the original is as follows. Cady becomes friends with Janis (Auli’i Cravalho) and Damian (Jaquel Spivey) who explain to her how the school is split into student cliques. The school is run by ‘The Plastics’ led by Regina George (Renee Rapp) who is the meanest girl at school. When Regina takes a shine to Cady, Janis and Damian suggest Cady infiltrate the group so they can get their revenge on Regina but ultimately Cady begins to enjoy the attention. But then she makes the mistake of falling for Regina’s ex-boyfriend Aaron (Christopher Briney). 

Personally I found this musical version of the film to be a very poor facsimile of the original. I did not find any of the songs to be particularly interesting or catchy and doubt I could listen to the soundtrack separately as you can with the musicals you love. I also found myself constantly comparing the scenes and actors to the original and none of those comparisons came out in favour of this new version. 

The film is not without merit and as I said at the top of my review, if you find the songs are for you then it could be a winner. Or perhaps this will be your first Mean Girls experience and it will not be coloured by the superior original. Either way I cannot see myself watching this again.