The comedy movie may be a dying breed at theaters, with fewer and fewer titles making it to the big screen in recent years, but the genre was at its peak in the 2000s. Movies like Napoleon Dynamite, The 40-Year-Old Virgin, and Legally Blonde had viewers busting into laughter and remain some of the best comedy films of the 21st century. Viewers hoping to revisit that peak period can now stream a cult classic 2000s comedy on Netflix, but it’s still up for debate whether its modern remake is worth pressing play on.
As Netflix began adding new titles to its streaming catalog for December, both the original Mean Girls and its 2024 reboot, technically based on the stage musical that itself is based on the original film, started streaming on the platform on December 4th. Both movies were written by Tina Fey and center around Cady Heron as she moves from years of homeschooling in Africa to an American high school and gets a crash course in high school dynamics when “the Plastics” invite her to sit with them.
Mean Girls Is a Near-Perfect Comedy That Its Reboot Couldn’t Live up To
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When Mean Girls debuted in 2004, it gained an instant cult following and continues to be a pop culture touchstone more than 20 years later. The movie is a quintessential high school comedy that essentially functions as an anthropological and sociological study of the complex social ecosystem of high school, providing a sharp commentary on social hierarchies, cliques, and bullying, issues that are still relevant today. That is all packaged into a tight script from Fey that is relatable, hilarious, and endlessly quotable with memorable lines like “You can’t sit with us” and “That’s so fetch!” And the entire cast is great, from Lohan’s portrayal of Cady to McAdams’s iconic Regina George. The movie as a whole has aged incredibly well and still holds up today, proving to be just as hilarious and fun as it was in the 2000s.
The 2024 reboot isn’t bad and is mostly the same story but with earworm musical numbers, strong performances, and a modernized take on social media and bullying, but it absolutely pales in comparison to the original, which was never going to be an easy feat to live up to. The film ultimately failed to capture the spirit of the original or the Broadway show, and while the cast was great in their own right, there’s just no comparing to the iconic performances in the original. The movie is decent and fun in its own right, but when put up against the original, it falters as a lackluster remake.
What’s New on Netflix?
There are plenty of great new streaming titles on Netflix that subscribers won’t want to miss. So far this month, everything from Troll 2, the anticipated follow-up to the streamer’s hit monster movie, to Season 2 of AMC’s Anne Rice’s Mayfair Witches has been added to the platform. Other titles include three Kung Fu Panda films, The Northman, and Forrest Gump, but since these are all licensed films, it’s unclear just how long they’ll be streaming on Netflix.
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