Saturday, May 7, 2016

Mean Girls: a lecture without being too preachy

Poster:




Plot:

Sixteen-year-old homeschooled Cady Heron (Lindsay Lohan) and her zoologist parents (Ana Gasteyer and Neil Flynn) return to the United States after a research trip in Africa, settling down in Evanston, Illinois and enrolling Cady at North Shore High School. Cady attends a public school for the first time, meeting new classmates Janis (Lizzy Caplan) and Damian (Daniel Franzese). The two warn Cady to avoid the school's most popular clique, the Plastics, who are led by queen bee Regina George (Rachel McAdams). The Plastics take an interest in Cady, and invite her to sit with them at lunch. Seeing that Cady is getting along with the Plastics, Janis hatches a plan of revenge against Regina, using Cady as the infiltrator.

Cady soon learns about Regina's "Burn Book", a journal filled with rumors, secrets, and gossip about the other girls and some teachers. Despite this discovery, Cady decides to forgo Janis's scheme for ethical reasons. Meanwhile, Cady begins to have a crush on Regina's ex-boyfriend, Aaron Samuels (Jonathan Bennett), whom a jealous Regina steals back at a Halloween party in front of her. Upon this incident, Cady decides to fully commit to Janis's plan to cut off Regina's "resources", which involve breaking Regina and Aaron up, tricking her into eating nutrition bars that actually make her gain weight, and turning Regina's fellow Plastics – rich but insecure Gretchen Wieners (Lacey Chabert) and sweet airhead Karen Smith (Amanda Seyfried) – against her. In the process, Cady unwittingly remakes herself in Regina's image, becoming spiteful, superficial, and abandons Janis and Damian.

When Regina is finally made aware of Cady's treachery, she retaliates by spreading the contents of her Burn Book all over the school, quickly inciting a riot. To avoid suspicion, Regina inserts a fake libel of herself in the book in order to blame Cady, Gretchen, and Karen, the only female students not mentioned in the book. Principal Duvall (Tim Meadows) soon quells the riot, and ends up sending all the girls in the school to gather in the gymnasium. Math teacher Ms. Norbury (Tina Fey), whom the Burn Book defamed as a drug dealer, makes the girls mentioned in the book confess to the rumors and apologize to the other students and teachers. When Janis's turn comes, she confesses her plan to destroy Regina with Cady's help and openly mocks Regina with the support of the entire school. Pursued by an apologetic Cady, Regina storms out and gets hit by a school bus, breaking her spine.

Without any friends, shunned by Aaron, and grounded by her parents, Cady takes full blame for the Burn Book. After making amends with Regina, Cady's guilt soon dissolves and she returns to her old personality. As part of her punishment for lying and failing Norbury's class, she joins the Mathletes in the state championship finals. There, while competing against a girl named Caroline Krafft, she realizes that the best thing to do is just solve the problem in front of oneself and ends up winning the competition after her opponent answers incorrectly. At the Spring Fling dance, Regina's new boyfriend, Shane Oman, is elected King, while Cady is elected Queen, but declares that all her classmates are wonderful in their own way, whereupon she breaks her plastic tiara and distributes the pieces to some other girls. She then makes amends with Janis and Damian, reconciles with Aaron, and reaches a truce with the Plastics, who then disband.

By the start of the new school year, the fate of the newly disbanded Plastics are shown. Regina joins the lacrosse team to deal with her anger, Karen becomes the school weather reporter (claiming earlier that her breasts can tell when it's raining), while Gretchen joins the "Cool Asians". Aaron graduates from high school and attends Northwestern University, Janis begins dating Kevin Gnapoor, whom she initially despised, and Cady declares that she is now normal. Regina walks past Cady and smiles, showing that they are now kind to one another. As this happens, Damian points to Cady the new "Junior Plastics" walking by, and Cady imagines them being hit by a bus.


Review:
this is my sister's favourite movie so I decided to give it a peek. and it was enjoyable to the end. my favourite characters would have been Principal Duvall and Ms Norbury.. the guy seem smitten and respectful of her while Ms Norbury is a sensible person who has the knack of laughing at her own self.

the moral of the story is sound.. in her quest to take Regina down a peg or two, somehow Cady had become her instead, cruel and petty. thank goodness she had sobered up and learned her lesson.

i know that this movie is a cult among its many fans. to me, it's a nice enjoyable movie.. boleh layan la kiranya :D

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