Mean Girls - "She Doesn't Even Go Here!"

Being raised and home-schooled in the African bush country by her zoologist parents, Cady Heron is naive to the pressure and expectation of a high school student. When the home-schooled 16-year old enters public high school for the first time she struggles to find her place between jocks, mathletes, art freaks, etc. Although many different cliques exist at the school, Regina George is the ‘queen bee’ of The Plastics, the most influential clique at the school. Cady, with the influence of her new friends Damien and Janis, infiltrate The Plastics. In an effort to sabotage Regina’s social status Cady can't help but for her actions, words and appearance to all be influenced by Regina and The Plastics. In the 'catty' girl world there are many lessons to be learned but also many hilarious moments and quotes for the viewer.

Many people may not realize this, but the movie Mean Girls is actually based off of the book Queen Bees & Wannabes by Rosalind Wiseman. This book is actually a self-help book that focuses on the ways in which girls in high schools form cliques, and on patterns of aggressive teen girl behavior and how to deal with them. Tina Fey wrote and co-stared in the film and while writing it based much of the movie from both her experience in high school and the content of this non-fiction book. I love the writing of this movie- it has such a smart sense of humour! I have many favorite quotes but one of my favorites is: "Laura, I don't hate your because you're fat. You're fat because I hate you." I also enjoy the emotional girl who wants to bake a cake full of "rainbows and flowers."

The best part about Mean Girls is how accurate it is to a real life high school; the similarities to a girl's high school experience and the movie are almost endless. You may not notice segregation into groups at a smaller school, but at a large school you can easily identify many of the same cliques mentioned throughout the movie. I found it especially funny when Regina George got hit by the school bus because I've almost been hit by a school bus on several occasions. The back stabbing, name calling and three-way calling attacks are all real-life methods which girls all over the world use to hurt each other.

This movie was extremely well cast with each actor bringing something special and unique to their role. I honestly like all of the characters because I feel you can learn a meaningful lesson from each of them. In a lot of ways my favorite character was the antagonist, Regina George. Unlike all of the other girls, Regina realized she was a mean girl and did not pretend like she wasn't. She did more than her share of back-stabbing and name calling but I like her because she accepted the fact that she was mean. It was not until the end of the film that the protagonist, Cady, accepted the fact that she was being a bad person as well. She acted like she was being victimized which she was; but every girl in the film was victimized in one way or another.

The best way to learn in life is to experience it first hand. But perhaps you can save yourself some pain by watching Mean Girls and learning from the character's many mistakes. This movie is an entertaining comedy but also teaches useful life lessons that you don't want to learn the hard way. I give this movie a 10 out of 10!