Mean Girls

Tina Fey, writer and Weekend Update woman for Saturday Night Live, no doubt kicked in a few of her own barbs when adapting the Rosalind Wiseman book Queen Bees and Wannabes for the big screen. Some of that wonderfully nasty tone that propels some of her more evil jokes on SNL makes it into her first screenplay, Mean Girls, an appropriately coldhearted glance at high-school girl politics. The always impressive Lindsay Lohan reunites with her Freaky Friday director, Mark S. Waters, and plays Cady, a home-schooled student from Africa getting thrown into the hell that is high school in the United States. After a rude welcoming from less-than-sympathetic classmates, Cady hatches a plan to ruin the reputations of three elitist high-school girls. High school has gotten more superior skewering with the likes of Heathers (’89) and Election (’99), but Mean Girls certainly has its moments. While it’s no classic, it’s pretty good nonetheless, and Fey looks to make a clean transition to the big screen after seven years of hard labor on SNL. (CPL, CR, CS, ER, NM)