Mean Girls
Paramount Pictures | Release Date: January 12, 2024 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
58
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 47 Critic Reviews
Positive:
24
Mixed:
20
Negative:
3
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
83
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Barry HertzJan 10, 2024
Rapp, who originated the role of Regina on Broadway, is a force-of-nature knockout, honouring but not imitating Rachel McAdams’s beautiful bullying from the first film with a sly kind of menace. Read full review
80
The TelegraphRobbie CollinJan 12, 2024
The generational rewrite has been deftly done, with enough timeliness braided in to make it feel freshly relevant, but all the gags fans want to hear again left reverently intact. Read full review
80
EmpireCatherine BrayJan 10, 2024
Sharp, funny and strongest when it stands on its own two perfectly manicured feet, this snappy musical successfully updates the original Mean Girls template for a fresh audience. Read full review
80
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzJan 10, 2024
I noticed about halfway through it that between laughs I’d been smiling the whole time. “Mean Girls” may not be totally fetch, but it’s still a good time at the movies. Read full review
80
SlashfilmBJ ColangeloJan 10, 2024
The film is a fun and totally fetch amalgamation of both eras of Cady, Regina, Gretchen, Karen, Janis, and Damian. Read full review
77
PolygonPetrana RadulovicJan 11, 2024
Bolstered by a (mostly) stellar cast, who make the iconic characters their own and show off their spectacular singing voices, Mean Girls is a fun little update, though it never transcends the experience of the original movie. Read full review
75
RogerEbert.comMarya E. GatesJan 12, 2024
Ultimately, the film is a vinegary cautionary tale, an angry screed against being mean for meanness sake, and a love letter to teens who are comfortable just being themselves. This time around it seems Fey and co. actually made fetch happen. Read full review
75
Boston GlobeOdie HendersonJan 11, 2024
Though I enjoyed both films, I had the same problem with this “Mean Girls” as I did with the original: I didn’t know whom to root for as the story played out. Read full review
75
Washington PostMichael O'SullivanJan 10, 2024
This “Mean Girls” may be a sugarcoated object lesson about unhealthy, ingrained behaviors, but it’s no downer. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleCarla MeyerJan 10, 2024
Despite some missteps, this version of “Mean Girls,” especially in its reframing of Janis, promotes feminism and inclusion almost as fervently as “Barbie” — although its characters still only wear pink on Wednesdays. Read full review
75
CNNBrian LowryJan 10, 2024
Mean Girls might recycle old tropes about high school’s caste system, but for those who just want a boisterous couple of hours in a theater, it aces that test. Read full review
75
ConsequenceLiz Shannon MillerJan 10, 2024
It’s the fresher lines, not the repeats, which draw bigger laughs — in fact, in some cases it feels unfair to the actors, making them recreate scenes that were already stellar in the original. Read full review
75
Entertainment WeeklyMaureen Lee LenkerJan 10, 2024
As it did in 2004, Mean Girls is a playground for a melange of fresh, new talent for whom we hope the limit does not exist. Did we really need another film version? No. But it’s pretty grool that the one we got is such fun. Read full review
75
IndieWireKate ErblandJan 10, 2024
As familiar as much of this will feel — and as easy as it will be for even causal fans of the original to toss off word-for-word line readings of iconic scenes — the new stars that line Samantha Jayne and Arturo Perez Jr.’s film add fresh dimension to the “Mean Girls” mythos. Read full review
75
Movie NationRoger MooreJan 10, 2024
It’s as fun as ever, and edgier than you remember. Read full review
70
Film ThreatBenjamin FranzJan 16, 2024
Bigger, brassier, and gayer than its predecessor, Mean Girls (2024) is a saccharine overload of cinematic bombast. Read full review
70
IGNTara Bennett Jan 11, 2024
Mean Girls is a winning, entertaining reworking of Tina Fey’s 2004 comedy. Featuring a collection of strong original songs and a successful updating of the story and messages, it's a musical reimagining worth watching. Read full review
70
VarietyOwen GleibermanJan 10, 2024
You can rest assured that Mean Girls, the movie musical, sticks close to the spirit and to the letter of the movie that updated and mythologized the culture of gossip and backstabbing for a new generation. The new movie nudges the material into our own era in a handful of ways. Read full review
70
The Film VerdictAlonso DuraldeJan 10, 2024
Chirpy, as colorful as Skittles, and occasionally, appropriately, acrid, Mean Girls is a pleasantly bouncy reworking of the 2004 comedy of the same name. Read full review
68
Paste MagazineAmy AmatangeloJan 11, 2024
It is hard to capture the utter joy of watching a live musical on the screen, but it’s here that Mean Girls falters. Read full review
63
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsJan 11, 2024
The core of Fey’s storyline hasn’t changed, even if technology has. It embraces, with trace elements of sincerity, the juicy comic extremes of mean-girldom, complete with an 11th-hour repudiation and a reminder to be nicer. Before it’s too late. Read full review
63
The Associated PressJocelyn NoveckJan 11, 2024
A slick, fizzy bit of entertainment that’s occasionally delightful and usually fun, even if the translation to 2024 definitely has its rough spots. Read full review
63
Slant MagazineDan RubinsJan 10, 2024
If this Mean Girls thrives too much on its relationship to the original, more tribute with songs than independent adaptation, its enjoyability is also a testament to the original’s staying power, as well as to Fey’s decades-long faith in the recyclability of her own material. Read full review
63
USA TodayBrian TruittJan 10, 2024
The new “Girls” sticks to the script plotwise, to a slavish degree. Even Fey and Tim Meadows playing their old teacher roles seems forced and uninspired. It’s only when the movie remembers it’s a musical that it refreshingly breaks from the norm. Read full review
60
The Observer (UK)Wendy IdeJan 21, 2024
The scene-stealing standout is Avantika, playing sweet-natured Plastic dimwit Karen. Her comic timing is impeccable; her musical number, a boisterous Halloween party romp titled Sexy, is worth the price of admission alone. Read full review
60
The Irish TimesDonald ClarkeJan 17, 2024
If the first film didn’t exist, the current Mean Girls would impress as a modestly clever variation on common tropes. As it is, the current picture will remain a footnote to earlier triumphs. Read full review
60
New York Magazine (Vulture)Jackson McHenryJan 12, 2024
It turns out that Mean Girls: The Musical: The Movie is pretty good, and likely to succeed at its primary purpose, which is to remind you that the original Mean Girls is fun. Read full review
60
Time OutAlice SavilleJan 12, 2024
2024’s Mean Girls needed to be loud, full-throated and unashamed to steal the original’s glittering plastic tiara: instead, it’s an enjoyable exercise in nostalgia that won’t win too many superfans of its own. Read full review
60
Wall Street JournalKyle SmithJan 11, 2024
A solid high-school comedy keeps stopping dead for a series of what amount to so-so MTV videos. Read full review
60
The New York TimesManohla DargisJan 11, 2024
It’s not especially tart and is undeniably over-padded, but its charms and ingratiating likability remain intact. Read full review
60
The GuardianPeter BradshawJan 10, 2024
There are plenty of laughs and fun along the way. Read full review
60
Total FilmKevin HarleyJan 10, 2024
A little more than a remake yet less than a makeover, Tina Fey’s watchable, well-cast revisit needed more daring to be wholly worthwhile. Read full review
58
Original-CinKim HughesJan 10, 2024
If I was a teenage girl, I might love it. But as an adult reviewer, I can’t help but feel weary about this earnest but mostly needless retread of a smart and engaging teen comedy, a genuine stand-alone classic. Read full review
58
The A.V. ClubLeigh MonsonJan 10, 2024
The songs and the performances thereof have been packaged in such a way that they are now more accessible than ever, for an audience that mostly never got to see them performed as originally staged. Yet the film that inspired them has been reduced to a hollow shell in which to carry them, like so much plastic meant to be thrown away. Read full review
55
The Daily BeastColeman SpildeJan 10, 2024
The Mean Girls movie-musical barely differentiates itself from its predecessor. Read full review
50
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliJan 12, 2024
Remove the musical elements and the 2024 version, directed by newcomers Samantha Jayne and Arturo Perez Jr., resembles an amateurish imitation of the 2004 original. Add in the mostly-awful songs and it becomes an in-your-face assault on the senses. Read full review
50
Rolling StoneDavid FearJan 10, 2024
Most of the student body quivers in Regina’s presence, and the movie seems to tremble in awe of Rapp’s ability to make you think she’s not a Queen Bee but the Queen Bee. Her limits don’t exist. You wish the rest of Mean Girls rose to meet her. Read full review
50
Screen DailyTim GriersonJan 10, 2024
While a few of the new songs are keepers, too often the razzle-dazzle distracts from a familiar but resonant look at the pain and pleasure of adolescence. Read full review
45
TheWrapKristen LopezJan 10, 2024
It’s a sanitized, Cliff’s Notes version of the original with a few songs thrown in. It’ll be great for audiences to see Renee Rapp, if they don’t know of her already, but she’s not in it enough to help save the rest of the film. This may not be your mother’s “Mean Girls” but it’s doubtful it’ll be anyone’s. Read full review
40
Little White LiesHannah StrongJan 18, 2024
The result is a teen movie with an identity crisis. Read full review
40
The IndependentClarisse LoughreyJan 11, 2024
This is exactly your mother’s Mean Girls – just repackaged with a bunch of TikTok cameos and some of Fey’s B-tier jokes. Read full review
40
Los Angeles TimesJustin ChangJan 10, 2024
So why does it all feel so laborious and overworked, so frantically self-regarding? It has something to do with the insipid quality of the songs, none of which threaten to lodge themselves in your brain the way the first movie’s lines so effortlessly do. Read full review
40
ColliderLisa LamanJan 10, 2024
The fate of fetch may be up in the air, but Mean Girls as a musical movie? That's clearly not going to happen. Read full review
40
The Hollywood ReporterDavid RooneyJan 10, 2024
All the effervescence and fun have been drained out of the material in this labored reincarnation, a movie musical made by people who appear to have zero understanding of movie-musical vernacular. Read full review
30
TimeStephanie ZacharekJan 12, 2024
Everything that made the original picture so sly, funny, and affecting is gone. Musical numbers spell out the obvious, and loudly. Read full review
25
ObserverRex ReedJan 16, 2024
2024 is very young, but in the months ahead, I seriously doubt things will get any worse than Mean Girls. Read full review
20
Austin ChronicleJenny NulfJan 10, 2024
A shot-for-shot remake would have had more school spirit than this. Read full review
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