We’ll Never Get Another Teen Comedy as Big as ‘Mean Girls’
From the moment Mean Girls first strutted into theaters in 2004, middle and high schoolers everywhere were hooked. Quotes like “on Wednesdays, we wear pink” and “Gretchen, stop trying to make fetch happen!” bounced around school hallways. On October 3, someone might turn around from their desk to deadpan, “It’s October 3,” and on Halloween, at least one girl would inevitably drop an “I’m a mouse—duh!” High school calculus classes became Ground Zero for “the limit does not exist!” jokes, and of course, “Boo, you whore!” became a go-to insult.
The adult world might have been insulated enough to avoid such cultural saturation, but Girl World was obsessed, partially because so few teen comedies had catered specifically to that audience; movies like Clueless, Legally Blonde, and Bring It On only occasionally floated in like little bedazzled life rafts on a sea of John Hughes movies and American Pies. With its A-list pedigree, snappy writing, and keen eye for cultural trends, Mean Girls was bound to go gangbusters, validating once more the power that women and girls hold in the mass market. (Hi, Barbie!) But no matter how many times we try to recapture the magic, it’s also time to accept a sad truth: We’ll probably never get another teen comedy this big again.
Back in 2004, Mean Girls had it all. Lindsay Lohan, who starred as Cady Heron, was at the height of her fame, and Regina George herself, Rachel McAdams, had locked down two blockbusters in the same year—Mean Girls and The Notebook. Lohan and McAdams, along with Amanda Seyfried and Lacey Chabert, completely understood the assignment, delivering their lines with a deliciously tart conviction, and even ancillary players like Rajiv Surendra (who played Kevin G) carved out their time to shine. Meanwhile, writer Tina Fey (who also starred as Ms. Norbury) was seven years into her Saturday Night Live tenure and had already spent four of them behind the Weekend Update desk. If that wasn’t enough to get parents on board, Fey’s fellow SNL stars Amy Poehler, Ana Gasteyer, and Tim Meadows also starred.