'Mean Girls' review: Fetch doesn't happen in movie musical retread

A generation was raised on "Mean Girls," Tina Fey's 2004 comedy about cliques, crushes and an outsider named Cady, a homeschooler who is forced to navigate the treacherous waters of high school life.

"Mean Girls" never really left our culture, and the latest version of the tale — based on the Broadway musical, which was based on the movie, which was based on the Rosalind Wiseman's 2002 novel "Queen Bees and Wannabes" — feels like a copy of a copy of a copy, like an overly familiar version of something where you already know all the lines, and the actors are waiting to deliver their lines, because they've been saying them their whole lives.

Which makes it feel a bit like cosplay, and there's not enough here to make "Mean Girls" stand on its own. It's trying to make "fetch" happen, and falling short of the mark.

Angourie Rice ("Mare of Easttown") stars as Cady Heron — Lindsay Lohan's role in the original — who moves from Kenya to Anywhere, U.S.A. and is left to her own devices to figure out the highs and lows of the high school industrial complex. She's helped along by outcasts Janis 'Imi'ike (Auliʻi Cravalho) and Damian Hubbard (Jaquel Spivey), who also narrate the story.

The real object of attention at North Shore High School is Regina George, the popularity princess and ice queen, and the head of the fashionable, feared Plastics posse. She's played here by singer and actress Reneé Rapp, who also played the role on Broadway, who doesn't so much recall Rachel McAdams in the original as she does a TikTok version of Miranda Priestly.

Regina holds court over her minions, the dutiful Gretchen (Bebe Wood) and the bubble-brained Karen (Avantika Vandanapu, credited here as just Avantika), whom we're told lord over the school. But it never quite feels like they do, and all the other groups that supposedly both admire and fear them in equal measure seem to be doing just fine in their own spaces.

Perhaps the chic vs. geek dynamics upon which these movies once thrived has been eradicated by the modern makeup of the high school caste system, or maybe it just feels that way from the outside. Of course there will always be popular girls who attract envy and attention, but this "Mean Girls" never convincingly makes the argument for this group — and Regina in particular — to be the head of the table. She just seems like a big ol' bully.

Rapp's strength is in her vocal delivery and oh yeah, did we mention this movie is a musical? Rapp flexes on "World Burn," where she gets to set fire to everything around her. But otherwise the songs are rather flat, even if directing team Samantha Jayne and Arturo Perez Jr., making their feature film debut, have some fun with the staging. They're taking heightened teenage feelings and illustrating them in over-the-top ways, like when Cady flirts with Aaron (Christopher Briney), a cute boy in her math class, and her desk turns into a tree swing in the middle of the classroom.

Still, this "Mean Girls" comes off a bit labored, and the structural problems with Fey's original (she also wrote the script here) remain. The conflict between Cady and Regina — it's over Aaron — is rushed and the stakes never feel high enough, and the idea of the fabric of the school being torn apart by a Burn Book, where anonymous insults are jotted about individual classmates, feels dated. By this point, wouldn't the Burn Book at least be online?

There are certain realities of the high school experience that remain universal, and while "Mean Girls" taps into aspects of those, other generational touchstone high school movies — from John Hughes' work to "Easy A" to "The Edge of Seventeen" — have done it better, and with more insight, and with more heart.

"Mean Girls" is best around the edges, like the spot-on casting of Busy Philipps as Regina's breezy mother, as Rapp suggests a cross between Philipps and Billie Eilish. Avantika, meanwhile, logs a scene-stealing song and dance number, "Sexy," about empowering but skimpy Halloween costumes.

Rice, bless her, has a thin singing voice, and just skates by in the musical department. "Mean Girls" also skates by, relying on familiarity with the property and not staking its own ground. Regina George, if she's half as cool as she thinks she is, would dismiss it with a roll of her eyes.

agraham@detroitnews.com

'Mean Girls'

GRADE: C+

Rated PG-13: for sexual material, strong language, and teen drinking

Running time: 112 minutes

In theaters