Missing the Mark

I was 12 years old when I first discovered the world of Mean Girls, I was at a softball party with friends when I saw the original movie and loved it. The original was definitely, as Gretchen Weiners would say: “So Fetch”. When I heard that their was a second movie, I could not wait to see and to say the least, I had very high expectations to the remake of my favorite movie. A few weeks later, one of my best friends and I rented it and were thoroughly disappointed. From the almost non-existent returning cast, to the copy paste plot line, this movie is trying too hard to make “… fetch happen, It’s not going to happen”.

Picture by: Movie Posters 2

Sequel Science

When we think of sequels, we know that they struggle to live up to the original. Many sequels are “increasingly associated with mediocrity”. They also state that “following up a box office hit with a sequel makes sense financially but there are indications that the audience appetite for film sequels has run its course.” I think we all can agree that Hollywood is overusing the vulnerability of fans to push a sequel onto audiences. Many sequels have reviews that rank significantly lower than the original films, but the box office numbers don’t show it as much because all fans have a “hopeful for redemption” attitude when going into remakes of their favorite movies.

Well that was a let down…

Some sequels are alright, some are bad, and some are Mean Girls 2.

Mean Girls: With an outstanding 24 million dollar box office opening weekend and 129 million dollar total, as reported by Box Office Mojo, It was no shock that Paramount Pictures was in high demand for a sequel to the original feature. The main question was, what would the story line be.

Mean Girls 2 is, “a watered-down, unfunny version of Mean Girls.”  With the same storyline as the first, this movie is hard to justify as even a sequel but more of a bad copy-cat version of the original. This was a low budget remake of the original and the ratings show it. This disgrace to sequels has a low score of 32 percent on Rotten Tomatoes as opposed to the original which ranked at a high 83 percent.

Mean Girls 2 is characterized as “isn’t a sequel so much as it is a thinly veiled, low-budget remake of the 2004 hit with which it shares a name.” Entertainment Weekly shared. This movie was straight to DVD and we are all wondering “is Paramount preparing to launch a new DVD franchise based around Mean Girls? And if so, what can we do to stop them?”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6hRRhN4VYk&t=34s

Picture by IMDb

Where did the cast go?

The original cast is completely missing except for one character, Mr. Duvall, portrayed by Tim Meadows. In case you were wondering what the main cast was up to during the remake: Lindsay Lohan was placed into rehab three times, missed 4 court hearings and spent 90 days in jail for misdemeanor and cocaine use reported CNN. Rachel McAdams was starring in another high profile movie ‘Morning Glory‘ with Harrison Ford. Tina Fey was writing/ starring in hit TV show ‘30 Rock‘ . Lastly, how could we forget Janis Ian. Portrayed by Lizzy Caplan, Lizzy has starred in many popular movies since her blockbuster debut in ‘Mean Girls’ in 2004 including ‘Now You See Me 2′, ‘127 Hours’, ‘The Interview’ and ‘Cloverfield’.

Dull-Witted Script

This trailer is of the recreation of one of the iconic scenes from the original movie when the ‘Plastics’ meet Cady for the first time. Similar to the first movie, rumors about where the protagonist is from swirl around. Jo´s rumors include that ¨she came somewhere, from, like, Florida or Texas. Then I also heard that she’s an exchange student from Russia.¨ An iconic line came out of the original when Cady says she’s from Africa and Karen responds with.¨So if you’re from Africa… …why are you white?¨ and then Gretchen chastises her by saying, ¨Oh, my God, Karen, you can’t just ask people why they’re white.¨

They also set the unrealistic expectation that dogs are allowed in every high school lunchroom. Even for the ‘Queen Bee’ this scene is unrealistic and badly written. The writers of this movie also dumb down all the main characters to unbelievable levels. Even for shallow people they make these characters unattainably stupid for any high schooler.

Production Faux Pas

An important factor to any good sequel is keeping a majority of main characters and either picking up where they left off in the first movie or creating a new storyline for them. Mean Girls 2 does absolutely nothing in effort to make this movie into a series format but more of a reproduction with a new cast. When the audience can tell that the movie is idealistically the same script with different names and less comedy, there is a huge problem with all parties involved.

Even the Introduction of Jo and Cady is similar but the sequel once again fails to include hilarity in their exposition.

This movie is dull in humor in the plot line and there is virtually no comedic timing. Mean Girls 2 relies purely on it’s namesake and the popularity of the original.

In the end…

We all know that Mean Girls 2 will never make up for the original. That is the common problem with majority of sequels but Mean Girls 2 really flopped on the whole “good movie” thing. Actually, this movie screwed up the whole average movie thing, Mean Girls 2 threatens to slump into repulsiveness. All things considered, this movie is a knockoff chick-flick with all of its funding and fan base coming from the fact that it has Mean Girls for its namesake.

Post by LarkinC. Featured Photo by Popsugar