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Дрянные девчонки (Mean Girls) (Английская версия)
Release Date: April 30, 2004
Rating: PG-13 - sexual content, language and some teen partying
Running Time: 1 hr. 36 min.
Cast: Lindsay Lohan, Rachel McAdams, Lacey Chabert
Director: Mark S. Waters
Mean Girls wants to have it both ways and, surprisingly, just about manages that trick. The first way, of course, is what Paramount is currently marketing: a teen comedy about high school girls battling for guys and social prestige. The other way is much trickier. Debuting screenwriter Tina Fey, a head writer on Saturday Night Live and co-anchor of the show's popular Weekend Update segment, lays a serious theme behind the high school high jinks.
Her script is based on Rosalind Wiseman's best seller Queen Bees and Wannabes: Helping Your Daughter Survive Cliques, Gossip, Boyfriends and Other Realities of Adolescence, a book that explores the power of school cliques and the role of girls within them. This duality results in an edgy comedy, where laughs stem at times from uncomfortable situations. In other words, Mean Girls lives up to its title.
All that attitude plus a subtle turn by young star Lindsay Lohan, who successfully reteams here with her Freaky Friday director Mark Waters, should help Mean Girls draw well from its target audience of teenage females.
Fey fashions her story around the role-playing in high school identified by Wiseman's book: the Queen Bee, her Sidekicks, the Torn Bystander, Messenger and Target, among others. Refreshingly, none of these types turn into stereotypes. The geeks among the Mathletes are allowed a surprisingly cool, unself-conscious hipness. And, sure, the Plastics -- the three girls at the center of all the social climbing and psychological warfare -- are plastic as hell. Yet Fey's screenplay insists on viewing them not as caricatures but as young girls confronting very real issues of image, self-worth and fear of failure.
Lohan plays Cady Heron, a young girl who is a social blank: She joins a Chicago-area high school directly from Africa, where her zoologist parents home-schooled their daughter. This allows Cady -- and the film -- to compare behavior in the animal kingdom and on campus, each a jungle in its own way.
As a lonely newcomer, Cady is initially adopted by the social outcasts Janis (Lizzy Caplan) and Damian (Daniel Franzese). These two are into art and treat all cliques with undisguised disdain. However, Cady's smashing looks and unusual innocence soon attract the attention of Queen Bee Regina (Rachel McAdams) and her sycophantic Sidekicks Gretchen (Lacey Chabert) and Karen (Amanda Seyfried).
The outcasts seize Regina's ambivalent flirtation with Cady as an opportunity to dethrone the Queen Bee: They persuade Cady to pretend to like the Plastics and hang out with them until she gathers enough information to use when it is most beneficial. Gradually, Cady gets a little too good at this espionage and, without realizing it, becomes a queen of mean herself.
One of the movie's achievements is persuading the audience to stay firmly in Cady's camp during her odyssey of self-discovery. As she gets savvy about game-playing and much, much meaner, you must still believe that the goodness of her heart has only temporarily been eclipsed. Lohan manages this transition as things unravel comically and the whole school comes apart at the seams over a prank.
The climax is somewhat forced and a little disjointed. All the girls are forced to assemble in the gym for a lecture and group therapy session from teacher Ms. Norbury (Fey). The movie may drive home its message without much subtlety, but the comedy remains sharp, and believability is never sacrificed.
For the second film in a row, Waters achieves striking comic results from a mix of young actors and veterans. The film's polish extends into tech areas from cinematographer Daryn Okada's energetic lensing to the revealing decor in Cary White's bedroom sets. Mary Jane Fort's costumes overemphasize her star's bust line, but that too is not uncommon among social-climbing high school girls.
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