FauxNixon

Much has been said of Lindsay Lohan and her problems since Mean Girls originally came out and whether any of it is true or not, director Mark Waters has captured what made Lohan originally famous: her ability to play characters well.

Lindsay Lohan stars as Cady Heron, a friendly, bright young woman whose home-schooling has kept her somewhat naive about public schools.  When she decides to enroll in a public high school she befriends outcast artistic introverts Janis Ian (Lizzy Caplan) and Damian (Daniel Franzese) who tell her about a group of girls so superficial and mean that their clique is called “the plastics,” and are comprised of Rachel McAdams in her role as Regina George, the leader of the plastics, Lacey Chabert as Gretchen Wieners, and Amanda Seyfried as Karen Smith.

Cady, with help from Damian and Janis, decides to infiltrate the plastics by pretending to be one of them to bring the group down from within and stop the plastics from torturing everyone else.

Mean Girls is an hilarious movie with a lot of genuinely funny and original comedy that is very effectively brought to the audience by some very great casting and the incredible work by Tina Fey in screenwriting.  Lindsay Lohan’s character development in the movie is worthy of special attention because she so effectively portrays first a naive, but knowledgeable, sheltered young woman who is basically just very nice and trusting.

Then she moves to an insecure and superficial student who becomes involved in the premiere high school clique and gains a dominant role, which sets her up for a fall when she becomes so much like her peers in the plastics that it no longer is a pretense, but a real part of her character, and finally to an epiphany where she realizes this upon reflection finds balance between her good-natured background and her new wisdom about human interactions.

It’s interesting to note the very high level of Saturday Night Live cast members involved in this movie, including Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Tim Meadows, Ana Gasteyer.  This movie shows the first genuine success of SNL cast members since Chris Farley and Phil Hartman, excepting Will Ferrell.