Mean Girls (2004/Paramount Blu-ray)

 

Picture: B-     Sound: B-     Extras: C+     Film: B-

 

 

What a difference five years makes.  Mark Waters’ Mean Girls (2004) was a funny comedy that made some headway and proved Tina Fey could do as well on the big screen as on the small.  She wrote this adaptation of Rosalind Wiseman’s novel Queen Bees & Wannabes and makes it work well.  This was supposed to be the film that gave star Lindsay Lohan the star power launch she needed to be the next big thing.  Instead, it has been an ugly, steep decline since she made this film and Fey has had a hit show and been part of a political pop culture explosion in her amazing impersonation of would-be VP and Alaska Governor Sarah Palin.  Talk about mean gals!

 

Here, Lohan plays a the new gal in school who could land up in the popular, but not very nice Plastics, an exclusive trio of gals who make life hell for so many.  The head queen bee (Rachel McAdams) says she wants her in, but is up to no good.  When they go head to head and the bee gets buzzed, revenge is the next step.  Darkly amusing, the film has strange nuances never intended when made considering all that has happened (intertextually) since and is an odd film to watch.  It was always odd.

 

Helping it to hold up includes good writing and performances from Fey, Lacey Chabert, Amy Poehler, Ana Gasteyer, Tim Meadows, Lizzy Caplan and Amanda Seyfried among others.  Lohan’s freefall spoils the film, but there is enough to enjoy otherwise so see it if you missed it before.

 

 

The 1080p 1.85 X 1 digital High Definition image is much softer than I would have liked it to be and not as good looking as the 35mm presentation I saw upon its first release five years ago.  Color is consistent enough, but detail, depth and some grain hurt the presentation, along with motion blur.  The Dolby TrueHD 5.1 mix is joke and dialogue-based, with a limited soundfield, though this mix may be a bit compressed, more than I remembered.  Extras include a trailer in HD, Music Video, a blooper reel, three featurettes about the making of the film, some other clips and a feature length audio commentary by Fey, Waters and Producer Lorne Michaels.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo