Mean girls summary (2004)

 

Mean girls is a stereotypical American teen angst film. Cady Heron is a home schooled teenager who’s grown up in Africa. When her parents move to America and decide to get her “socialised” she suddenly finds herself in a completely new environment. She joins North Shore high school innocent and naïve, but that doesn’t last long, she quickly finds herself influenced by her peers.

Starting school as an outcast, alone and vulnerable she is soon taken in by Janis Ian and Damien, two other students considered also to be outcast, she soon begins to settle in and everything is going well until ‘The Plastics’ invite her to sit with them. Janis convinces her it will be a good idea and to spy on them to get back at Regina for ruining Janis’s life when they were younger. The plastics are considered royalty within North Shore, and Cady is quickly influenced by their spiteful ways. What started off as a prank of revenge has now changed into bitchy behaviour and Cady slowly becomes influenced by The Plastics therefore becoming one of them and, forgetting about her true friends.  

However Janis is still determined to seek her 8^th grade revenge and ruin Regina, with the help from Cady she discovers her secrets and uses them to turn everyone against her. They pull a number of pranks on Regina, such as replacing her face cream with foot cream and making her eat Cal Teen bars that make her gain weight. However Regina discovers their plan and frames Cady for writing ‘The Burn Book’ this is a book where the plastics have wrote mean things about the girls in their year. Cady is now most hated, not helped by the fact Regina is then hit by a bus and many people think she was pushed by Cady. Cady is still however voted spring fling queen (the equivalent to prom queen) makes a speech apologising to everyone she has hurt. She makes up with Janis and Damian, the Plastics split up and school continues peacefully.

The target audience for this film is teenage girls, they would be attracted to this film because it is relatable, it shows issues that the audience face within everyday life, it shows issues such as bullying, spitefulness between cliques and just everyday problems that teenage girls encounter. Another reason girls are attracted to this movie is the main boy within the film is attractive and good looking so many are drawn in by the presence of the good looking male with a kind personality. A teen angst often shows a stereotypical version of how life is shown to be, however it is often exaggerated. A common theme is parties, alcohol, drugs and sex. This attracts the audience as it is a more exciting version of life.