Mean Girls 2
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This isn't Mean Girls 2, this is just Mean Girls by in-name only.
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Mean Girls 2 is a 2011 American teen comedy television film directed by Melanie Mayron, and serves as a stand-alone sequel to the 2004 film Mean Girls. The film first premiered on ABC Family on January 23, 2011, and was released on DVD on February 1. It stars Meaghan Martin, Jennifer Stone, Maiara Walsh, Nicole Gale Anderson, Claire Holt, Diego Boneta, and Linden Ashby.
Plot
After a clique of girls makes life difficult, a new student (Meaghan Martin) forms a rival group to take control of the school's corridors.
Why It's Not So Fetch
- The movie doesn’t even qualify as a sequel, it feels more like a knock-off, remake, reboot, bad Wattpad fanfiction, or a generic Disney Channel TV movie than a sequel.
- Not only that, but it also feels like your generic teen comedy.
- The film is very unnecessary because it ended on a high note with the original characters going on with their lives. What's more, the film was released seven years after the original making the potential for a sequel stale.
- False advertising: The poster claims that the Plastics from the original movie are returning in the sequel when they’re not.
- The sequel tries to spoon-feed us the context we already got but rehashed and without everything it had in the first film that made it so memorable.
- It completely ignores the events of the original.
- The opening logo is cheap and ugly, it shows a CGI car and an alma mater forming the movie’s logo.
- A lot of characters (except Principal Duvall) from the original film are not seen or mentioned, particularly Cady Heron, Regina George, Ms. Norbury, Gretchen Wieners, Mrs. George (Regina's mom), Betsy Heron (Cady's mom), Janis Ian, Damian, Chip Heron (Cady's dad), Aaron Samuels, Karen Smith, Tim Pak, Jessica Lopez, Kristen's boyfriend, etc., since none of the original actors except for Tim Meadows reprised their roles in this film.
- There even no explanation is given as to what happened to them like they never even existed in the first place!
- Everyone in this sequel is forgettable, ESPECIALLY the protagonist Jo Mitchell and the new Plastics.
- Jo Mitchell is an unlikable, bland, and uninteresting protagonist who claims to be the "cool and edgy" type and is a walking embodiment of "I’m not like other girls" and it gets irritating fast.
- The way the Plastics in this sequel dress is nothing like how popular kids at school dress, in fact, they look straight out of the fashion store, Justice.
- Misleading Title: Like Home Alone 3/Home Alone: The Holiday Heist, Grease 2, Son of the Mask, and Happily N'Ever After 2: Snow White—Another Bite @ the Apple, this film looks more like a spin-off/reboot than a sequel whose story and characters were changed at the last minute; in fact, it shouldn't have been titled Mean Girls 2 to begin with!
- Principal Duvall does a very weird dance and shows it to the whole school.
- Elliott, the Plastics' boyfriend's acting is very bad. In fact, his face is weird.
- The antagonist, Mandi Weatherly is an awful villain. She’s just your generic popular girl, yes, she's THAT generic. Oh, did we also mention that she’s more of a supervillain than a mean girl?
- She has NO redemption arc whatsoever. Regina George was the antagonist in the original movie, but she was given a redemption arc and becomes friends with Cady Heron in the end. But here, Mandi was given a karma ending instead.
- You can already tell she’s evil when she does "villainous" things like throwing her dog in the garbage, which is borderline animal cruelty.
- The narration is pale and sounds something from the YouTube channel, Troom Troom.
- One scene had one of the Plastics' shirt down with her bra showing, we're not joking!
- Principal Ron Duvall (who's played by the only original cast member to return and reprise his role, Tim Meadows) is flanderized in this movie.
- Compared to the sometimes edgy and challenging content of the original movie, the sequel feels bowdlerized and childish by comparison.
- The film is very unrealistic as there are a lot of scenes that don’t even happen in real life, unlike the first Mean Girls which relies on realistic elements and nature:
- When Mandi asks the girls to move from their table and they did.
- Mandi panicking over her hand getting dirty in public.
- When a student accidentally smashes food in Abby’s face, everyone in the cafeteria laughs at her, which is just unrealistic and mean-spirited.
- Everyone laughs at a car that looks like it got hit by paintballs.
- It was stale that this movie came out 6 years after the first film.
- Overall, it's a forgettable movie that basically killed off the Mean Girls franchise, until 13 years later when Mean Girls (2024) is released.
Redeeming Qualities
- It makes sense for the original cast not to return in the movie because they were too old for their characters and the fact that they were high schoolers, and they've grown up into mature adults by the time the sequel went into production.
- Some funny moments here and there.
- Principal Duvall is the only character from the first movie to return and despite his flanderization, he is still pretty likeable character (and is probably the only good character in the movie).
Reception
Mean Girls 2 was panned by critics and audiences alike and holds a 29% Audience Score on Rotten Tomatoes. Hilary Busis of Entertainment Weekly calling it a "thinly veiled, low-budget remake of the 2004 hit with which it shares a name".
Brian Orndorf gave the film a D+ grade and wrote that "Whatever problems I had with the 2004 feature aren't even an issue here, as the new film offers a decidedly more pedestrian take on the clique warfare concept, trading (Tina) Fey's sly ambition for cruel DTV routine."
Trivia
This was filmed in 22 days in production.