[Rescheduled to Wednesday, July 19.] This week’s installment at Movies on the Block is the 2004 teenage social comedy ‘Mean Girls’ with Tina Fey (who also wrote the script) and starring a sweet 18-year-old Lindsay Lohan as Cady.
Cady Heron is a hit with The Plastics, the A-list girl clique at her new school, until she makes the mistake of falling for Aaron Samuels, the ex-boyfriend of alpha Plastic Regina George.
This take on the unpleasant manipulations perpetrated by the teengirl social hierarchy (hopefully an exaggeration of today’s average American high school) also features: Rachel McAdams, Amy Poehler, Ana Gasteyer, Lizzy Caplan, Amanda Seyfried, and Tim Meadows (‘Son of Zorn’).
Calling it “tart and often charming” Elvis Mitchell noted in The New York Times that it is Fey’s script that lifts this movie above all those other painful slogs featuring SNL alums. In fact, Fey pulled this off in her spare time while still a head-writer for the show.
The sureness of tone in the script achieves such clarity that our sympathies remain with Cady even as she begins to become what she has beheld. She has a genuine taste for it, the trap for all double agents. (Sometimes, the film is like a teenage version of the undercover mob saga ”Donnie Brasco.”) But ”Mean Girls” concentrates primarily on its eccentric and funny small touches, like an exchange between two jealous Korean girls or the electric car parked in Cady’s parents’ driveway.
Running time 97 minutes. Hooray for short movies! It means they only kept the good parts. Rated PG.
Sunset 8:14pm, Wednesday, July 19, Grant’s Block, 260 Westminster Street, (directions)