Analysis of a teen angst film - Mean girls

Mean Girls is one of the most popular teen angst films, released in 2004 with the famous actress Lindsay Lohan playing the main character. Cady, Lindsay Lohan's character, moved from the African bush where she was raised and home schooled to a busy American town where she will attend a high school and struggle through typical teen troubles.

Cady's first day is a struggle where she makes no friends and eats her lunch in the school bathrooms, however on the second day she instantly makes friends with two students, Damian and Janis, who help her find a suitable seat in her form registration class, however these students are anything but popular. She soon meets the schools popular trio known as the 'plastics'. Led by Regina George the main antagonist

within the movie, her loyal follower Gretchen Weiner and Karen Smith who is known as "one of the dumbest people you will ever meet". They invite her to sit with them, something unknown in the dynamics of the school's social groups, but  Cady senses trouble and is unsure not wanting to loose her first friends here. Her friends convince her to go and sit with the plastics so she can find out some of their deepest and darkest secrets.        

Cady starts off sitting with the plastics but soon finds herself falling for a boy in her math class, that boy being Aaron Samuel's. But when Cady lets this slip to Gretchen and Karen they warn her off, explaining how he is Regina's ex-boyfriend and that is not a good idea. They promise they will keep her secret, but of course in stereotypical teen girl life they don't. Regina calls Cady that night letting her know she knows but

telling her she does not care. However she portrays this differently when she gets back with Aaron and purposely dangles him in front of Cady. Cady runs straight back to her original friends for a shoulder to cry on. They convince Cady to remain friends with the mean girls and they will help her to sabotage Regina's lives, something that Janis has wanted to do since Middle school. Cady sits with the plastics permanently and tries to ruin Regina's life by giving her foot cream instead of face cream, allowing Aaron to find out she is cheating on him, giving Regina protein bars instead of diet bars and trying to get Gretchen to spill all of Regina's secrets. However in the midst of all this Cady becomes one of the plastics, dressing and acting like them and even falls out with her closest friends.

When Regina finds this out she rushes to the 'burn book', a book the girls have created which has nasty comments about all the girls and Damien in their grade. In this book she sticks a picture of herself writing nasty comments before taking it to the school head teacher and claiming she found it in the girls toilets. She accuses Cady, Gretchen and Karen, who have all turned against her, of the book as they are the only girls in the school not in this. All the girls in the school are taken to the gym and attend a type of therapy, counselling session but when Janis spills what they have been doing to Regina she storms off. Cady runs after her and they endure a screaming match, before Regina is hit by a bus. The film comes to a sudden pause here before we see the end where Cady retires to her old ways and wins the mathlete competition with some of her teammates. She then attends the prom with them, dressed in her new mathletes jacket. Cady beats all the other candidates, including Regina, Gretchen and Janis and wins prom Queen. After a heart tugging acceptance speech that she is not required to give we witness Cady getting her happy ending with Aaron and the plastics splitting up and going there separate ways, joining new social groups within the school ready for their final year.                                                                                                                              

I think this movie attracted such a large audience as it not only focuses on real aspects of teenage life, it contained light humour and drama to attract the target audience. The film could relate to a large majority of the audience as many young teens experience social groups such as the ‘plastics’, but it also attracted a different sort of audience with the humour used, separating it from a drama.