The Mean Girls Movie Musical Cuts A Transformers Joke From The Stage Version (And More)
This article contains spoilers for "Mean Girls."
Every stage-to-film musical adaptation requires reimagining, rearranging, or removing elements that wouldn't gel well with the camera and the editing room. Retelling "Mean Girls" (every version of which has been penned by Tina Fey) involves the monumental assignment of adapting layers-upon-layers of its sources, starting with Rosalind Wiseman's 2002 nonfiction parent book "Queen Bees and Wannabes," and then moving onto the original 2004 Mark Waters-directed film based on Wiseman's book, the 2018 Casey Nicholaw-directed Broadway stage musical adaptation (which also features music by Jeff Richmond and lyrics by Nell Benjamin), and, finally, the 2024 "Mean Girls" movie musical directed by Samantha Jayne and Arturo Perez Jr.
Naturally, the "Mean Girls" movie musical had to scrap several songs and gags from the Broadway stage musical to leave space for makeovers. Theatre heads who've experienced the stage version are bound to notice some major exclusions, including those listed below.
Teens love doing transformative works (Transformers included)
Speaking of teen-based theatricality, the "Mean Girls" movie musical doesn't include Cady envisioning a savannah prowled by high schoolers costumed in amateurish knock-offs of the stage costumes from the Broadway musical version of "The Lion King" (the stage adaptation of Disney's smash-hit animated film musical was playing a few streets away from the August Wilson Theatre that housed "Mean Girls").
Furthermore, pop culture is ever so the hyper-fixation of young adults, and teens might make theatre out of anything. Think of the virally famous "Alien" stage adaptation by New Jersey high schoolers armed with props molded from recycled materials and their imagination. You yourself may have gone to school with nerds who could cobble together elaborate "Transformers" cosplay and show off their ability to fold impressively into vehicles when they crouch, which is exactly what happened in the "Mean Girls" stage musical before the Plastics' winter dance fiasco. I recall scores of laughter and applause for the 10-second gag, so it's fair to assume it was a repeated hit with the audience every performance.
In the movie adaptation, this performance fanart is substituted with Damian ("A Strange Loop" star Jaquel Spivey) slaying his fan moment by singing the "ICarly" theme song in French at the talent show. You have to give Damian his roses for being so avant-garde.
Lyrical sugery, Plastics surgery
Giving Damian (Grey Henson on Broadway) his talent show spotlight comes off as compensation for expelling Damian's stage numbers (the "Where Do You Belong" cafeteria number and the act two tap-opener "Stop") from the "Mean Girls" stage musical. In addition, Cady's "It Roars" is replaced with the yearning "What Ifs." Since the film doesn't have an intermission, it also excises the stage musical's Act 1 closers: the ensemble's "Fearless" and Regina's own reprise of "Till Someone Gets Hurt (Reprise)." Critics might notice that this newest version additionally disposes of a pretty yikes lyric like "Being Kenyan, he ran fast" from "Stupid with Love" (it's been said that the touring productions similarly cut it).
Surgically trimming "Meet the Plastics" from a Plastics ensemble number to Regina's verses might hit as a baffling choice for die-hard fans of the stage version. Not only does it remove singing parts for Damian and Janis (Auliʻi Cravalho on screen; Barrett Wilbert Weed on Broadway), but it also erases Gretchen's and Karen's respective character verses. Fans might lament that this robs the posse of their introductory dimensions. Gretchen's (Ashley Park, the Broadway Gretchen, cameos in the film) "yes Regina, no Regina" establishes her obsession with her subservient role and her thrill in watching Regina burn the high school peasants. As for Karen (Kate Rockwell on Broadway), her lyrics execute a kindergartener-level of rhyme before she crescendos to "I may not be smart" but then drops a "that's it" that stops just before a finishing verse (although the theater audience might figure that Karen perhaps meant to add a lyric that rhymes "smart" with "heart").
Karen is actually a smart ditz
Even though stage-Karen couldn't figure out that rhyme, she proved to have a heart anyway. Kate Rockwell played Karen with a dash of earnest bubbliness, owing to the fact that the musical text supplies her with introspection. The "Mean Girls" stage musical also features the closest friendship between Cady and Karen. During the post-Burn Book incident, Karen texts Cady with kind words, funny emojis, and then a burst of surprising insight. Although Karen knows she has a low IQ, she states that she understands the "Rule of Twos," where "everything is really two things." She even points out Cady's own human contradiction, being both saboteur and beneficiary of the Plastics, while also noting the human contradiction of Regina being mean "only because she was unhappy with herself." Her wisdom helps Cady make sense of the warfare between her and Regina, which demonstrates that a self-aware ditz doesn't have to lack emotional intelligence or empathy.
In favor of harkening back to the dim-witted Karen of the 2004 film (played by Amanda Seyfried), the "Mean Girls" movie musical elected to brush away Karen's (Avantika Vandanapu) emotional intelligence and her close friendship with Cady along with it. This may be to make room for Cady's other relationships, though one may argue that potential character development got scrapped along with it.
The "Mean Girls" movie musical is now playing in theaters.