Mean Girls and the Emptiness of Remaking a Classic

Spoilers for Mean Girls. But seriously, that movie is 20 years old.

In 1998, Gus Van Sant released Psycho, his remake of the legendary Alfred Hitchcock film of the same name. Frankly, calling this film a “Remake” is underselling it a tiny bit; It’s the same movie. The shots, the script, even the music, are all the same.

As a whole the film is…well it’s bad, probably the worst of Gus Van Sant’s career. Which, in and of itself, is interesting; Gus Van Sant is a director with an enviable career, but he has had his share of duds (and in case you’re wondering, no I don’t consider Gerry one of them). But usually those duds are weird and interesting; At least Even Cowgirls Get the Blues is bugfuck crazy. But Psycho is just…the same movie its remaking, but with something missing. Something about the original made it special, and whatever that thing was, it’s gone in the remake.

There’s a somewhat famous anecdote where, when asked why he remade Psycho shot for shot, Van Sant responded “So no one else would have to.” And that answer has always fascinated me; I can’t imagine what it must be like to be tasked, either by your boss or by your own ineffable muse, with remaking a film so iconic that lines and images from it have been seared into our collective unconscious. Honestly, I think the reason more people don’t try to default to just remaking the original shot for shot is Van Sant showing us all, so publicly, how little that would actually work.

Not that Mean Girls (the 2024 musical film, directed by Samantha Jayne and Arturo Perez Jr) is a shot for shot remake. How could it be; It’s not technically a remake at all, but an adaptation of the 2018 musical adaptation of Mark Waters’ film. But despite the layers of adaptation, the film remains an incredibly faithful retelling of the 2004 film. The plot, the character arcs, even much of the dialogue, is the same. And in so doing, it asks the same question that Psycho 1998 asks; Is there value in remaking a movie so famous that scenes and lines from it are burned into the cultural unconscious?

There could definitely be value in it, since Mean Girls 2004 is not without its flaws. And while the 2024 film does occasionally fall into the trap of trying to alter stuff to head off criticism of the original films the Disney Live Action remakes are always jumping head first into, it also makes some reasonably intelligent changes. The removal of the Cool Asians and all the attendant nonsense is a good alteration, as is making Janis an out and proud lesbian (with attendant changes to her backstory), even if much of it is just left on the table.

And there is good in the movie, unique to itself. Some of the songs aren’t bad, a couple of them are pretty good, and all of them are well staged and directed. Renee Rapp is absolutely magnetic as Regina George, impossible to look away from when on screen and Auliʻi Cravalho is an excellent Janis, doing a very different take on the character than Lizzy Caplan did, but one that feels like it works with the new movie. This is not a terrible movie, there are worse ways to spend a Saturday afternoon.

But every so often, there are moments where the film…breaks kayfabe, where the machinery of the movie spins bare and we are reminded that this is not a movie that exists on its own, it is a movie that exists entirely because of another better movie. Moments where, the rhythm of the scene be damned, it’s time for Cady to tell Aaron that it’s October 8th.

There’s also just the fact that the movie is leaning pretty heavily on the existence of the original film in order to paper over the gaps in its own script. The conversation between Cady and Regina before Regina is hit by a bus is a key beat in the original, but it’s pushed into a background event during a song, relying on our knowledge of the original film to communicate the key emotional information of that scene (that Cady is now regretting her actions, but Regina is spiteful and unrepentant) and leaving only the punchline of the bus hitting Regina. And that’s just a single example, a lot of important information slips through the cracks in the shift away from Cady having a consistent internal monologue (the film tries to paper over this by having Damian and Janis act as a Greek Chorus, but the script and the directing aren’t up to making the most of it). It’s not even that it doesn’t make sense, the plot beats are mostly there, but the things stringing them together are gone. The pieces that make up Cady’s transformation or Regina’s fall are rushed through to make room for the musical numbers, flattening out the characters and their arcs.

In an attempt to appease modern sensibilities, a lot of the more cruel behavior has been left in the dust, and in so doing, the film has lost its metaphorical teeth. And yeah, some modern sensibilities probably needed to be appeased (see my comment about Janis above) but so much has been sanded away, the movie has no edge, no…well meanness. And there’s no way to say this without sounding like a psychopath but the movie needs some cruelty, in order to function. It’s a movie about the viciousness of high school social circles, if you don’t show that then it has no point. Without some Mean, Mean Girls is just Girls. And I hate Lena Dunham.

In 2014, Steven Soderbergh released Psychos on his personal website. The film is a bizarre mashup of Hitchcock’s original 1960 film, and Gus Van Sant’s remake. To the best of my knowledge, Soderbergh hasn’t answered many questions about it (He makes a new film roughly every 10 months these days, and the legality of the mashup is dubious, so I’m sure he has other things to talk about) so I have no idea what was on his mind when he edited them together.

But what I see is a filmmaker who finds that these two films are in conversation with each other, and who wants to see if something interesting could be said. And that’s an understandable impulse, I feel; Both Hitchcock and Van Sant are towering figures in the film world, and Psycho is perhaps one of the most well known movies in history. These two figures, taking a crack at the same material, the same shots, must have some value, must have something to say, even if it has to be filtered and translated.

I don’t think either version of Mean Girls is a work on the level of Psycho and none of the principles involved are artists on the level of Van Sant or Hitchcock. But it is a film that has left an indelible mark on the culture. Rachel McAdams snapping that fetch is not going to happen is as famous a film moment as Janet Leigh clutching at a shower curtain in her final seconds, perhaps more. And there could be value mined from their interplay, from seeing how 20 years have shaped and reshaped the narrative. A conversation between the two films could still be had. Something could still be said.

But Mean Girls 2024 prefers to keep quiet. Or worse, just mouth along with whatever the 2004 version is saying.