Mean Girls!

 Do they have to make a stage musical of every movie that took in a hundred bucks? Apparently so.

Mean Girls, the musical based on Tina Fey's 2004 movie, came to town this week at the cramped Orpheum. Opening night was about 80% full, mostly us olds on one hand and then nobody in the middle and then teen aged girls in packs making up half the crowd. And man were they entertained.

If you've seen the movie you know the plot. A young l6 year old girl named Cady is brought back to America after growing up in Kenya with her biologist parents and placed in the local high school after being home schooled in Africa. She is befriended by a misfit girl named Janis and her "too gay tor function" compadre Damian. She meets the local "plastics", three girls too mean to function and is asked to go undercover to learn secrets about the Mean Girls. In the process she becomes the mean girl, betrays her original friends , loses a boyfriend and eventually finds herself again.

Some of the tunes were catchy. Some of the singers were good. Some of the actors were good. And the opposite was also true. I found this musical to be either really good, depending on who was on stage, or dull as hell when others were onstage. But then I am not really the demo for this when you think about it. I am an old white guy who likes stuff about adults. The rest of the crowd were young ladies out on the town determined to enjoy themselves and bully for them (did that bully thing prove I'm old?). There was knee slapping and howling going on behind us at jokes I found maybe smile inducing but not really all that funny. But again I am old and find Mrs Maisel hilarious because I get the 60's references and remember it fondly. Modern high school references don't hit home as they should as I realize now that high school sucks.

But yes the highlight was a great tap dancing sequence to the song Stop opening act 2. I guess that made it worth the trip. 

Mean Girls is ok. I didn't hate it but didn't love it. When the Broadway series was announced last year I felt this would be the weak link. Yep.