MEAN GIRLS Movie Musical - News & Discussion Thread- Page 7

[bryan2]

Posted: 1/12/24 at 9:50am

Listening to the soundtrack now...wow did they suck the life out of the broadway orchestrations. 

I am surprised how dull the songs sound and even Renee seems bored one the recording.

Angourie Rice has no voice at all. Has she ever sung before ? I am shocked at how weak her vocals are. 

Just very dissapointed,  I was so looking for this  :(

[ColorTheHours048]

Posted: 1/12/24 at 10:03am

Ever since they announced this, I’ve had my hackles up. As a huge fan of the original movie, I haaaaaaated the stage version. The score is mostly awful and everything moves too quickly to even invest in the story. For all the comedy, the original never loses sight of the fact that the characters are people with complexity; the musical has almost none of that.

Now along comes this straight-to-video looking rehash that doesn’t even bother to distinguish itself from the original - even using Tina and Tim in their OG film roles, how f***ing lazy can you get? - and seems almost embarrassed to label itself as a musical (the only thing setting it apart from its predecessor). It treats some of the most quotable lines from the original, memes with a life of their own at this point, like winky in-jokes and any new material pales in comparison. The stage production felt like a Cliff’s Notes retelling of the movie with some crappy songs strewn in, but at least it had energy; this movie just feels cynical and boring.

In the immortal words of Damian, “And none for Gretchen Wieners, bye!”

[rattleNwoolypenguin]

Posted: 1/12/24 at 10:16am

"Apex Predator" is so boring now. 

The only song I kinda liked.

[NOWaWarning]

Posted: 1/12/24 at 10:37am

I didn’t like the songs from the stage show, so I was fine with the idea of cuts and rearrangements. But jeez, I didn’t think that would lead to a musical where most of the songs are under 2 minutes. Are they that short in the actual film as well? Makes you wonder what the point of this even was if they were going to barely include music and then try to hide it in the marketing anyway. 
 

The Color Purple also had me feeling naively hopeful that we were maybe moving on from musical films where people can’t sing (Reneé, Auli’i, and Jaquel being the exceptions). I understand the commercial reasons behind hiring big names who can’t really do a score justice, but these actors are all relatively unknown to the public. Such weird decision making.

[ElephantLoveMedley]

Posted: 1/12/24 at 10:45am

This was a mixed bag for me.

The best thing about this movie is that we get Reneé Rapp’s Regina immortalized. She’s fabulous and her voice is just incredible. No one can come near Rachel McAdams in the role, but I thought Reneé’s take was unique and iconic in its own right.

I thought some of the modernization updates were smart, such as how they treated Regina’s distribution of the Burn Book and how Karen’s “Sexy” number plays out through the phones.

Similar to ColorTheHours048, I am a massive fan of the original movie and could recite it from memory beat by beat. Though I thought the stage adaptation was largely an abomination, it’s still Mean Girls and is just a fun, silly, dumb time. It filled a few nights for me back in 2018/2019 when I wanted to go to the theatre and turn my brain off completely for two and a half hours.

What the movie does well as an adaptation of the musical is cut so many of its songs. The score for Mean Girls is pretty terrible, but at least the movie streamlined it. This allows the film to move along at a brisk, breezy pace similar to the original film and not the pace of the Broadway musical, which sometimes stopped dead in its tracks for an overlong, gratuitous Casey Nicholaw production number.

However, I found the treatment of some of these songs to be sooo bizarre, largely in the orchestrations department. They clearly wanted to pop-ify the score, but I felt that doing so took away from their impact and the few moments when the score is actually good from a musical theatre perspective. “Someone Gets Hurt” turns into a sultry R&B song, which sounds delicious with Reneé singing it, but it completely takes away from the point of the song, which is about emotional manipulation and letting the audience into Regina’s mental calculations. "Apex Predator" doesn't land as hard with Janis and Damian narrating it and Cady just standing by watching it play out. “What Ifs” was a bafflingly dull replacement for “It Roars.” “Stupid With Love” turns into a monotone bore.

That leads me to the biggest flaw in the movie for me: Angourie Rice was soooo boring as Cady. Her vocal register has the span of three, maybe four notes. If some people thought Erika Henningsen was too bright and Disney Princess-y in the role, well, you have the complete opposite performance happening in this film. Lindsay Lohan's Cady was so good because she convincingly brought you along for the ride of her slow burn from transplant from Africa into true Plastic. Angourie kind of just gave deer-in-headlights for the whole thing. 

All this said, though… I didn't actively dislike this movie. While the songs sounded off, I thought they were mostly filmed pretty creatively and inventively. I also ADORED

 

Click Here To Toggle Spoiler Content

Lindsay's cameo.

I’ll probably watch it a few times when it comes out on streaming, but within a year or two, it’ll just be the 2004 original for me in perpetuity.

Updated On: 1/12/24 at 10:45 AM

[WldKingdomHM]

Posted: 1/12/24 at 10:58am

I think everyone just needs a drink and just have fun. Is this an Oscar winning movie with a score ? Nah. 
 

does everyone remember the movie teen witch ? 
 

and for the poster above with the suprise cameo it should be in the spoiler box 

[ElephantLoveMedley]

Posted: 1/12/24 at 11:01am

WldKingdomHM said: "and for the poster above with the suprise cameo it should be in the spoiler box"

Totally right, my bad! Fixed!

[chrishuyen]

Posted: 1/12/24 at 11:47am

ElephantLoveMedley said: "That leads me to the biggest flaw in the movie for me: Angourie Rice was soooo boring as Cady. Her vocal register has the span of three, maybe four notes. If some people thought Erika Henningsen was too bright and Disney Princess-y in the role, well, you have the complete opposite performance happening in this film. Lindsay Lohan's Cady was so good because she convincingly brought you along for the ride of her slow burn from transplant from Africa into true Plastic. Angourie kind of just gave deer-in-headlights for the whole thing."

I haven't seen the movie yet, but based on the trailer and what I've heard, I thought between this and Prom they seem to be casting uninspiring leads who have kind of the same expression throughout the whole movie.  Not sure if it's a direction thing or if they're casting actors who can't quite play the full depth of the role (I'm not familiar with either of the actors outside these movies), and they also don't seem like they're incredible singers or big names so I don't really know why they were cast.

[TotallyEffed]

Posted: 1/12/24 at 11:52am

WldKingdomHM said: "I think everyone just needs a drink and just have fun. Is this an Oscar winning movie with a score ? Nah.


does everyone remember the movie teen witch ?


and for the poster above with the suprise cameo it should be in the spoiler box"

 

Teen Witch is a camp masterpiece.

[Kad]

Posted: 1/12/24 at 12:28pm

It's certainly doing much better critically and at the box office than I ever suspected it would, and seems poised to help further the careers of Rapp, Cravalho, and Spivey. Good for them. It still feels like a big ol' "why?" to me but we'll see if it has legs.

Updated On: 1/12/24 at 12:28 PM

[ChairinMain]

Posted: 1/12/24 at 1:21pm

One review claims that Grey Henson has a cameo in the film, but i can't find any other info about it. Does he? 

[ElephantLoveMedley]

Posted: 1/12/24 at 1:57pm

ChairinMain said: "One review claims that Grey Henson has a cameo in the film, but i can't find any other info about it. Does he?"

If he did, I missed it completely.

[DJD4]

Posted: 1/12/24 at 3:09pm

I haven't watched the film yet so I can't give an honest opinion yet, but wow that soundtrack is bleak!

What did they do to "stupid with love"? Its almost like they said "we're sorry this is a musical, but we made the songs sound nothing like a broadway show so maybe you'll like it more!". I guess now we know what Billie Eilish or Lana Del Rey would sound like as Cady.

[pupscotch]

Posted: 1/12/24 at 4:34pm

I had low expectations for the movie and it about met them. Jaquel Spivey was really great as Damian and I wish he’d had a full number like Where Do You Belong, he shined whenever he was on screen. Angourie Rice was deeply boring and the reorchestrations for Stupid With Love were just awful, that number is so flat in the film. Renee and Auli’i were also good.

Updated On: 1/12/24 at 04:34 PM

[RippedMan]

Posted: 1/12/24 at 5:05pm

ChairinMain said: "One review claims that Grey Henson has a cameo in the film, but i can't find any other info about it. Does he?"

Is it a cameo if 2% of the audience knows who it is?

[DaveyG]

Posted: 1/12/24 at 5:59pm

The budget is apparently 36 million dollars - so with the average press and marketing spend they’ll need to make 72 million to break even. My guess is they’ll squeak that out and everyone will forget this movie exists in about three weeks. 

[Jonathan Cohen]

Posted: 1/12/24 at 10:02pm

DJD4 said: "I haven't watched the film yet so I can't give an honest opinion yet, but wow that soundtrack is bleak!

What did they do to "stupid with love"? Its almost like they said "we're sorry this is a musical, but we made the songs sound nothing like a broadway show so maybe you'll like it more!". I guess now we know what Billie Eilish or Lana Del Rey would sound like as Cady."

Personally I thought "Stupid With Love" was the most successful example of the movie switching up an arrangement from the Broadway version. Lyrically it's Cady vulnerable and insecure. Belting the song out with confidence is at odds with how she's feeling in the moment.    

[Jonathan Cohen]

Posted: 1/12/24 at 10:24pm

DaveyG said: "The budget is apparently 36 million dollars - so with the average press and marketing spend they’ll need to make 72 million to break even. My guess is they’ll squeak that out and everyone will forget this movie exists in about three weeks."

The original movie cost like $18M, made $130M globally and because of nebulous accounting, Paramount claims it never made a profit. (Rosalind Wiseman who wrote the original non-fiction book is thinking of suing for withheld profit participation.)  

I suspect people who want to say the new movie is either a huge success or failure will be equally armed with data points.  

[musicalfandukie]

Posted: 1/12/24 at 10:51pm

Jonathan Cohen said: "Personally I thought "Stupid With Love" was the most successful example of the movie switching up an arrangement from the Broadway version. Lyrically it's Cady vulnerable and insecure. Belting the song out with confidence is at odds with how she's feeling in the moment."

Maybe the song works better in the movie but listening to the soundtrack the song sounds bland. Most of the songs sound bland now with the new orchestrations though. The songs just aren't spectacular enough to be stripped down like they are in the movie version. They need the bigger orchestrations and vocal moments to help make them more memorable.

 

Updated On: 1/12/24 at 10:51 PM

[Claude Perkins]

Posted: 1/13/24 at 1:07am

DaveyG said: "The budget is apparently 36 million dollars - so with the average press and marketing spend they’ll need to make 72 million to break even. 

Nope. The theatres will keep 45-50% of that 72 million ( if it gets there) .

Updated On: 1/13/24 at 01:07 AM

[GingerActor]

Posted: 1/13/24 at 3:47am

I’ve been lurking this board for years and rarely post. Against my better judgement I’m responding to this thread. I had a feeling they would change some of the orchestrations. The new arrangements feature a lot of contemporary synth-pop, rock, and R&B elements. I actually really love a lot of what’s happening here. I don’t love Cady’s voice but everyone else is working hard in their songs and clearly Renee Rapp steals the soundtrack. I think it’s important to remember that the Broadway version isn’t going anywhere and theatres are performing it as I type. I don’t think that the new orchestrations sucked the life out of the songs as was mentioned. I think the teens (and me at 37 it seems) who like what’s happening in songs by Billie Eilish and Dua Lipa will really dig these new versions. Everyone is entitled to their option as always but some of us really like this new Mean Girls! 

[Rentaholic2]

Posted: 1/13/24 at 11:11am

I've never seen the stage production, but it sounds like both it and this movie are placed in present day?  That's disappointing.  Mean Girls is a millennial period piece in my view, and a lot of its humor and dialogue is very rooted in that time period.  Do kids these days say words like "fugly"?  (I know from the cast album that at least that word is still used).  

[musicalfandukie]

Posted: 1/13/24 at 11:31am

GingerActor said: "I’ve been lurking this board for years and rarely post. Against my better judgement I’m responding to this thread. I had a feeling they would change some of the orchestrations. The new arrangements feature a lot of contemporary synth-pop, rock, and R&B elements. I actually really love a lot of what’s happening here. I don’t love Cady’s voice but everyone else is working hard in their songs and clearly Renee Rapp steals the soundtrack. I think it’s important to remember that the Broadway version isn’t going anywhere and theatres are performing it as I type. I don’t think that the new orchestrations sucked the life out of the songs as was mentioned. I think the teens (and me at 37 it seems) who like what’s happening in songs by Billie Eilish and Dua Lipa will really dig these new versions. Everyone is entitled to their option as always but some of us really like this new Mean Girls!"

I actually really like Billie Elish and Dua Lipa and I'm around the same age as you lol. I expected there to be changes from the original source material. What works on stage doesn't always work on film but the music's changes don't feel like they were made to make the source work on film. They feel like they were made because the filmmakers/studio has no confidence in this movie being a musical. I get where they are coming from because they need the movie to be a success but sometimes watering down elements for mainstream audiences only weakness things. Renee is amazing and she is definitely the stand out on the soundtrack but these new smaller orchestrations feel like a miss opportunity. I would of loved to hear her go full out on Someone Gets Hurt. Most of the reviews I've read praise the film and performances but also state the music is the weakest part. If you enjoy the new orchestrations that's great, This is just my opinion and maybe I am way out of touch lol. some of the songs are slowly growing on me and maybe I will enjoy it more when I see the movie.

 

 

Updated On: 1/13/24 at 11:31 AM

[jpbran]

Posted: 1/13/24 at 2:51pm

Claude Perkins said: "DaveyG said: "The budget is apparently 36 million dollars - so with the average press and marketing spend they’ll need to make 72 million to break even.

Nope. The theatres will keep 45-50% of that 72 million ( if it gets there) ."

Correct. My guess is that its break-even point would be closer to $100m. BUT this also has a payout from Paramount+'s annual budget, so it could possibly go into the black even sooner than another non streaming-related movie would. 

Updated On: 1/13/24 at 02:51 PM

[Impeach2017]

Posted: 1/13/24 at 3:43pm

Regardless of the "kids these days" carping, is it not a wonderful sign that several movie musicals are currently surviving and even flourishing in the current market?