Mean Girls (Widescreen Special Collector's Edition) (2004)

Los Angeles Times
"[Mark Waters] confirms that he has a fine studio touch. He keeps the story light and bright, and he brings out real comic performances from his cast, including newcomer Seyfried, who plays her ditz with Judy Holliday charm..." 04/30/2004 p.E1

Entertainment Weekly
"The movie is full of good ideas....Look behind the glasses to Fey's invaluable expressions of womanly deadpan dismay for advice on all things modern-girl." 05/07/2004 p.57-8

USA Today
"MEAN GIRLS has the same fancifully dead-on tone as 1995's CLUELESS." 05/07/2004 p.9E

Rolling Stone
"Fey subverts formula to find comic gold. She's a brash new voice in movie comedy. Boy, do we need her now." 05/27/2004 p.90

Sight and Sound
"[A] slick, enjoyable film....The dialogue is witty and sharp..." 07/01/2004 p.56

Chicago Sun-Times
"[The film] sidesteps a lot of cliches, goes for real humor instead of gags, and even contains some wisdom." 09/17/2004 p.21

James Berardinelli's ReelViews 6 of 10
I would have liked Mean Girls more if it had followed the Heathers/Election mold and n
 
Rolling Stone 7 of 10
The plot is flimsy, but director Mark Waters (Freaky Friday) trusts Fey's tart dialogue to ca - Peter Travers
 
Chicago Sun-Times 8 of 10
In a wasteland of dumb movies about teenagers, "Mean Girls" is a smart and funny one. It even contains some wisdom, although I hesitate to mention that lest I scare off its target audience. The TV ads, which show Lindsay Lohan landing ass over teakettle in a garbage can, are probably right on the money; since that scene is nothing at all like the rest of the movie, was it filmed specifically to use in the commercials?..."Mean Girls" dissects high school society with a lot of observant detail, which seems surprisingly well-informed. The screenplay by "Saturday Night Live's" Tina Fey is both a comic and a sociological achievement, and no wonder; it's inspired not on a novel but on a nonfiction book by Rosalind Wiseman. Its full title more or less summarizes the movie: Queen Bees and Wannabes: Helping Your Daughter Survive Cliques, Gossip, Boyfriends, and Other Realities of Adolescence...In the middle of all this, Lindsay Lohan, who was 17 when the movie was filmed, provides a center by being centered. She has a quiet self-confidence that prevents her from getting shrill and hyper like so many teenage stars; we believe her when she says that because of her years in Africa, "I had never lived in a world where adults didn't trust me." She never allows the character to tilt into caricature, and for that matter even the Plastics seem real, within their definitions of themselves, and not like the witch-harridans of some teenage movies...Will teenage audiences walk out of "Mean Girls" determined to break with the culture of cliques, gossip and rules for popularity? Not a chance. That's built into high school, I think. But they may find it interesting that the geeks are more fun than the queen bees, that teachers have feelings, and that you'll be happier as yourself than as anybody else. I guess the message is, you have to live every day as if you might suddenly be hit by a school bus. - Roger Ebert
 
The Onion A.V. Club 7 of 10
If John Hughes, Heathers, and their teen-comedy disciples are to be believed, adolescents develop a sense of hierarchy and social order long before they start to question their place in it, which is why conformity and cruelty tend to go hand-in-hand in the upper grades. Freely adapted from Rosalind Wiseman's non-fiction book Queen Bees And Wannabes, which offers a parent's guide to the harsh intricacies of "Girl World," the acrid bubblegum satire Mean Girls isn't content to accept this caste system as a given. In its sharpest moments, the film steps back and takes an anthropologist's view of high school, with cliques as tribes and lunchroom tables as a set of clearly demarcated territories...The home-schooled daughter of African zoologists, Lindsay Lohan keenly notes the connection between a suburban public school and the animal kingdom, but that doesn't prevent her from being a gazelle among lions when she attends school herself...Saturday Night Live news co-anchor Tina Fey, who wrote the script and appears in a key supporting turn, doesn't give Wiseman's concepts the full Luis Bunuel treatment they deserve, but she smuggles a few bitter insights into an often empty-headed subgenre. The best jokes riff on the arbitrary rules and trends that confine teenagers to the rigid social climate of an Edith Wharton novel, with minor fashion faux pas leading to poisonous gossip and even outright banishment. The film lacks the discipline to stay on point all the time, but Fey and director Mark S. Waters (Freaky Friday) have fun with offbeat throwaway touches, like burdening an already world-weary principal (Tim Meadows) with carpal tunnel syndrome, or giving gangsta inflections to a star mathlete. Considering the herd mentality of other PG-13 teen disposables, Mean Girls stands out like a "Floater" in Wiseman's Girl World, confident enough to think for itself and still fit in with its peers. - Scott Tobias