1/2—two and a half sticks of doom

It's impossible to talk about Mean Girls without talking about Heathers. The themes are mostly the same. Teenagers live in a world of social stratification, in which the lunch table you sit at determines your status; intermingling of groups is discouraged; and there is always a clique of mean girls ruling over it all. In Heathers, they go by the eponymous moniker, "the Heathers"; in Mean Girls, it's "the Plastics." Both films feature a single outsider who infiltrates the ranks of the privileged clique, and causes havoc from within. But compared with the comically violent Heathers, Mean Girls is one big genteel catfight.

Heathers would never be made now. Not after Columbine. If it were made today, it would either be dramatically less violent, or gritty and cautionary—like Kids. It would not be the darkly funny masterpiece that it is. People these days are just too PC to chuckle when a football player's grieving father announces, "I love my dead gay son!" And they're frankly uncomfortable when the dying beauty queen sputters out the words "Corn Nuts," after drinking a cup of liquid Drano. But it was just that sort of wicked humor that propelled the movie to instant cult acclaim. Back then, teens killing other teens was still in the realm of pulp—it was not all over our newspapers and televisions—and thus, the filmmakers could get away with all sorts of nastiness in the name of satire.

Enter 2004, and we have a movie that follows in the social-commentary tradition of Heathers, without getting any blood on its white kid gloves.

The screenplay was written by Saturday Night Live's Tina Fey, so it's no surprise that the film is funny. It's also no surprise that other members of the cast make appearances throughout the film. What is a surprise is that most of these supporting performances are low-key and understated (Ana Gasteyer is a serious-minded zoologist and mother; Tim Meadows is a mild-mannered principal with carpal tunnel). And that's a good thing—all it would take is one scene with a whacked-out, hyperactive Will Ferrell, and the movie would be irretrievably hijacked from its young stars.

Now to matters of plot. Cady (Lindsay Lohan) has lived her whole life with her zoologist parents in Africa, and is entering public school for the first time at 17. Naturally, she notices certain similarities between the behavior of students and that of the primates back home. (The implication couldn't be more obvious. High school is a Darwinian cesspool where the strong exercise nearly unlimited power over the weak. Who knew?) Cady is befriended by two cool people (we're meant to understand this by their alternative clothing), and then is invited to sit with the Plastics. They have rules: you can only wear a ponytail once a week, everyone wears pink on Wednesdays, etc. Initially, her cool friends encourage her to hang out with the Plastics, hoping she can do reconnaissance and report back all the idiocy of the clique's inner world. Soon, though, Cady is acting stupid. She starts to ignore her real friends and even sabotages her math test so she can get a guy she likes to help her. (I knew girls who did this—very sad.) Despite these changes, she continues her campaign against the reigning queen (aptly named Regina) by tricking her into eating high-carb weight-gaining bars, substituting foot cream for her usual face cream, and turning her friends against her. This is teenage malice at its funniest.

But then, things go horribly right.

SPOILER AHEAD!: My only real beef with Mean Girls is that it ends on a note of forced serenity. All the wickedness and malevolence somehow deliquesces into a sort of Pax Romana, where we're honestly meant to believe that Regina has forfeited her throne in favor of the bland pleasantries of socialism. Somehow, our heroine Cady has managed to deconstruct the bonds of caste that have enslaved students since the dawn of public education. She has created an egalitarian utopia. And she has done it with a well-worded apology to the school, and by finally wearing her "Mathletes" jacket with pride. I don't know about you, but I think the explosive final sequence in Heathers is more plausible ("My date kind of flaked out on me"). Poison will be poison, no matter how much you dilute it. And Mean girls will always be mean girls.

Overall assessment: pretty funny. It's no Heathers, but it'll do in a pinch.