You know, it’s funny – if someone asked me, I wouldn’t tend to say that Mean Girls is one of my all-time favorite movies, but it is one of the only movies that I still enjoy watching from start to finish regardless of how many times I’ve seen it before or how recently I’ve last seen it. I just don’t seem to get tired of it. It’s a masterwork.
One of the best things about this movie, in my view, is Rachel McAdams’s performance as popular teen queen Regina George. It is a luminescent, terrifying portrayal that absolutely jumps off the screen, right up there with Rosamund Pike’s conniving Amy in Gone Girl and even Jack Nicholson’s horrific turn in The Shining. Although it’s Lindsay Lohan’s Cady that we’re encouraged to empathize with throughout the film, and Cady’s story that we follow most closely as she rises through her new high school’s social ranks, Regina is the character who comes to mind for me immediately when I think about Mean Girls. Regina is the keystone of the entire story, the dictator who rules her high school’s social hierarchy, the beautiful, brilliant, blonde bully who makes the rules and punishes transgressors. Regina is the engine and the fuel of this story, practically from start to finish.