‘Mean Girls’ Directors Defend TikTok-Heavy Movie: ‘Let the Kids Decide’
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You might be familiar with Mean Girls on Broadway, most recently toplined by Sabrina Carpenter and Reneé Rapp, and you’ve almost definitely seen the 2004 movie, packed with more quotable moments than one can count. So, in the new movie musical Mean Girls, directors Samantha Jayne and Arturo Perez Jr. had big shoes to fill.
To prepare for the Tina Fey-scripted, Lorne Michaels-produced film, the married directing duo headed to a high school in Ottawa, Canada, and learned from the pros: Gen Z theater kids. They soaked up the lingo and learned a whole lot about social media obsession.
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“Information spreads so quickly,” Jayne tells Rolling Stone. “Something happens in homeroom and then everybody hears about it when the bell rings. Everybody.”
The novice directors — Mean Girls marks their feature directorial debut — were tasked with bringing the film into the era of Internet oversharers, group-chat gossipers, and TikTok dancers. Much of the premise remains the same: new kid Cady (Angourie Rice) arrives at North Shore High, befriending outcasts Janis (Auli’i Cravalho) and Damian (Jaquel Spivey) and later becoming an honorary “Plastic.” Rapp reprises her Broadway role as It Girl Regina George and Tim Meadows (Principal Duvall) and Fey (Ms. Norbury) reprise their two-decades-old film roles. Only now, the shade-throwing is punctuated by song-and-dance numbers and smartphones galore. The duo say they wanted the film to feel like it was a few inches from the viewer’s face.
“None of us wanted to overdo the phone, but I think it’s really important to speak the language of teens now,” explains Jayne.
Before spearheading Mean Girls, the directing duo wrapped the short form FX series Quarter Life Poetry in 2019 — a deeply personal story that explores anxiety-riddled experiences in your mid-20s. Like Mean Girls, the dark comedy looks inward and validates the emotions of young women.
“You’re feeling what it’s like to be crushed in office culture for the first time and it’s a huge feeling,” Jayne says about Quarter Life Poetry. “When you’re a teenager, you’re feeling what it’s like to have an actual crush for the first time and it’s a huge feeling.”
Jayne says she remembers the unbridled excitement she felt watching Mean Girls as a teen, and immediately agreed to the “not your mother’s Mean Girls” project in 2021. As a film “for fans, by fans,” the duo couldn’t resist recreating Fey’s script, including lines like, “You can’t sit with us” and “Get in loser,” as well as the disastrous holiday show performance and Cady’s corpse bride costume.
“We all agreed that there are certain moments [where] there would be riots in the streets if it’s not in there because people have been quoting this movie for 20 years,” she says. “These are beloved characters.”
In an effort to modernize the film, the directors used a heavy hand when it came to social media and TikTok references. In the opening scene, Janis and Damian fumble with a cell phone recording as they foreshadow the film: “This is a cautionary tale/About corruption and betrayal!/And getting hit by a bus!” And later, when Regina does get flattened by a bus, a social media frenzy of “whodunnit” ensues.
“When you’re being bullied online, it feels violent,” Perez Jr. says. “It feels like you’re this close to the phone. Everything we did in this movie, we wanted to make you feel the way the characters feel.”
We see this format again as airhead Karen, played by Avantika, records and rerecords the song “Sexy,” which later morphs into a split-screen montage of Halloween costumes — including one bra-revealing tank Easter egg — and again when a prank on Regina becomes a viral beauty trend.
“We have a new limb, this thing is here and it’s not going anywhere,” Perez Jr. says. “It’s not like you’re going to tell kids to put your phone down. You can’t even put your phone down.”
The film leans into Perez Jr.’s music video-directing background (he worked on Justin Timberlake’s “Say Something”) and camera operator Ari Robbins’ (La La Land) panoramic cinematography, particularly during the number “Someone Gets Hurt,” while Kyle Hanagami’s choreography feels like an earthquake rocked the house party, jolting the partygoers as Regina lures in ex-boyfriend Aaron Samuels (Christopher Briney).
“They have so many different songs and different genres of music, some of them are ballads, some of them are more pop, some of them are more rock,” Hanagami tells Rolling Stone. “For me, it was really important to have a visual distinction between each character, almost like you would a music artist. So, the way that Karen moves is entirely different than the way that Regina seduces Aaron, for example.”
As a YouTuber himself, Hanagami also helped recruit influencers like Chris Olsen, Alan Chikin Chow, Nia Sioux, and The Merrell Twins (Veronica and Vanessa Merrell) for dance breaks and TikTok snapshots.
Despite additional cameos from Megan Thee Stallion and an original Mean Girls star, some critics have added the film to their Burn Book. Rolling Stone’s David Fear wrote the social media trope began to feel like a “crutch” and the musical numbers “would have benefited from a bit more visual breathing room.” For Perez Jr., if he could’ve made the entire film on TikTok he would’ve.
“This is for the kids,” he says. “Let’s let the kids decide.”
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