Mean Girls: Difference between revisions

=== This film provides examples of the following tropes: ===

 

* [[Alpha Bitch]]: Regina and, [[Becoming the Mask|later]], Cady. The whole movie is arguably a [[Deconstructive Parody]] of this trope, demonstrating how a girl can be so simultaneously loved, feared, and hated by the rest of the student body.

* [[Ambiguously Gay]]: Regina claims Janice Ian is a lesbian, though she's actually {{spoiler|Lebanese}}. Her outfits reinforce the stereotype, but by the end of the film it's obviously not true.

** Most of Regina's behavior fits this trope.

* [[Blondes Are Evil]]: Regina. Subverted with Karen, who is actually pretty nice.

* [[Blood-Splattered Wedding Dress]]: Cady's Halloween costume.

* [[Bowdlerise|Bowdlerization]]: [[Tina Fey]]'s [http://www.dailyscript.com/scripts/mean_girls.pdf original script] was rated R, and was filled with sexual innuendo, drug humor and "wall-to-wall titties" (Fey's words) in the vein of such teen sex comedies as ''Porky's'' and ''[[American Pie]]''. Several scenes that were in the movie were raunchier in their original form -- the "made out with a hot dog" line was originally supposed to say "masturbated," (and in fact, if you read the girl's lips when she says, "Made out with a hot dog? That was one time!" she obviously says masturbated, it's just dubbed-over.) Regina and Karen's Halloween outfits (already [[Stripperiffic]] in the final film) were basically bras and panties, and the scene where Gretchen and Jason are caught making out in the bathroom originally had Gretchen about to give Jason a blowjob. There was also a subplot involving an ecstasy-popping raver kid named Barry that was dropped from the finished product.<br /><br />The script was toned down after [[Lindsay Lohan]] was cast in the lead role, due to the fact that she was then considered a [[Contractual Purity|family-friendly teen actress]] (which became [[Hilarious in Hindsight]] several years later after her scrapes with the law). Even then, the film had to be edited further to receive a PG-13, a lot of [[Getting Crap Past the Radar|crap got past the radar]], and an astute observer can spot some lines that were dubbed over in order to tone the film down.

* [[Curse Cut Short]]: Regina.

{{quote| "You can take that fake apology, and shove it right up your hairy c--" ({{spoiler|Regina gets hit by a school bus.}})}}

* [[Dance of Romance]]: Subverted with Damian, then almost immediately played straight with Kevin.

* [[Dawson Casting]]: Regina George is played by Rachel McAdams, who, at 27, was closer in age to the actress playing her mother ([[Playing Gertrude|32-year-old]] [[Amy Poehler]]) than she was to the 16-year-old Regina. Also, Lacey Chabert and Lizzy Caplan were both 21 when the film was made. Lindsay Lohan and Amanda Seyfried, however, were both teenagers at the time.

* [[Heel Face Turn]]: Cady at Spring Fling, and all the Plastics at the end.

** Arguably before that, when {{spoiler|Cady takes the blame for the Burn Book}}.

* [[Hidden Depths]]: Gretchen {{spoiler|confesses to Cady that she's secretly miserable as Regina's friend and has to pretend to like and not like certain things to get Regina's approval.}}

* [[High School]]

* [[High School Dance]]: Spring Fling at the end.

* [[Homeschooled Kids]]: Cady is one. The opening scene also parodies the stereotype of home schooled kids being either ultra-[[Nerd|nerds]] or [[The Fundamentalist|religious whackos]].

* [[Hormone-Addled Teenager]]: Most of them, but since the movie's a comedy it's mostly [[Played for Laughs]].

* [[Important Haircut]]: Off screen. After Regina spread the rumor in middle school that Janis was a lesbian, Janis dropped out of school for the rest of the year; when she returned in the fall, "all her hair was cut off, and she was totally weird."

* [[The Mall]]: Janis works here. Cady also compares the kids hanging out here to the wild animals she grew up with in Africa.

* [[Meaningful Name]]:

** And in the same vein, it's surely no accident that on many different occasions, a character will mispronounce Cady's name, thinking it's pronounced "catty."

*** As an aside, Tina Fey later sang a bit of "At Seventeen" in an episode of ''[[30 Rock (TV)|Thirty Rock]]''.

* [[Minion With an F In Evil]]: Karen seems to be remarkably lacking in actual ''meanness'' per se; in nearly all respects she comes across as a [[Dumb Is Good|good natured ditz]]. In fact, her only real defining characteristic, besides being [[The Ditz]], is that she remains a loyal friend to Gretchen even through Gretchen's [[Villainous Breakdown]].

{{quote| "Is butter a carb?"}}

** Don't forget that, as a rule of Girl World, you have to dumb yourself down to appeal to boys. It's more than likely that, with the exception of Karen, all the girls are [[Obfuscating Stupidity|pretending to be much dumber than they actually are]].

* [["The Reason You Suck" Speech]]: Janis gives Cady one at her party, though Cady does [[Shut UP, Hannibal|fire back]].

* [[Rich in Dollars, Poor In Sense]]: Regina in a specific example. She could rattle off several mostly-illegal weight loss drugs (most of which either were expensive before being banned or would be expensive to ship from countries where they're still legal.) Yet, she didn't know enough about health and nutrition to know whether or not butter is a carb. It's especially egregious because almost any health class is going to teach nutrition and in general, most teenage girls are so body-conscious that they know more about nutrition than most professional dietitians.

** Aaron was fleshed out a little more in the original screenplay. Regina complains that he cares about 'his family, friends and school' and there was even a scene with him and Cady where he does the laundry, and explains that he helps out because it's [[Disappeared Dad|just him and his mom.]]

* [[Sexy Santa Dress]]: The skimpy dresses that the girls wear for a Christmas pageant.

* [[So Beautiful It's a Curse]]

* [[Stepford Smiler]]: Gretchen (the "one small step from a complete nervous breakdown" version, rather than the "empty inside" version).

** The film was a lot filthier before it was PG-13ified. See [[Bowdlerise|Bowdlerization]] above.

* [[Wild Teen Party]]

* [[You Are the New Trend]]: Regina. One scene has Janis cutting nipple holes in Regina's shirt in the locker room to try and sabotage her wardrobe. Regina wears the top anyway and the next day, every girl has the exact same nipple holes in her shirt.

* [[You Fail Geography Forever]]: In one scene, the characters go to Old Orchard Mall (technically "Westfield Old Orchard"), a Chicago-area mall known for being a large, ''outdoor'' mall. Its stand-in was Sherway Gardens in Etobicoke, Ontario, a more conventional ''indoor'' mall.

* [[Chekhov's Gun]]: The paranoid neighbor. Specifically his security cameras.

* [[He Who Fights Monsters]]: Tyler points out in one scene that Jo is acting a lot like Mandi.

* [[Incredibly Lame Pun]]: The "Anti-Plastics". Noted as such by Jo in voice-over

* [[Irony]]: That a girl named Chastity will sleep with [[Anything That Moves]].

* [[Polite Villains Rude Heroes]]: Mandi and Tyler (see next trope). Only those two however; Mandi's horrible to everyone else.

* [[Sibling Rivalry|Step Sibling Rivalry]]: Mandi and Tyler, though oddly the dislike comes entirely from his side and Mandi, despite being a bitch to everyone else seems to have some sisterly feeling for him, even declaring him off limits to Chastity and calling his father (her stepfather) "''our'' Dad". He's also the only character she's never directly mean to.

* [[What the Hell, Hero?]]: When Abby finds out that Jo accepted money to be her friend, she takes it about as well as one would expect.