Cady Heron is a gentle home-schooled girl cast into a world far more vicious than the African jungle -- high school. In her quest to sabotage the lives of the mean girls, she becomes one herself.

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**Analysis**: Mean Girls is not your ordinary teen movie. True, it is about a larger than life teen with larger than life teen angst; however, Mean Girls doesn't seem meant to be enjoyed by teens. Whilst my twenty-something friends and I were laughing rather boisterously, the adolescents in the audience cast off only the occasional giggle to foster the impression that they actually comprehended the film's pointedness. Truthfully, Mean Girls can only be completely enjoyed from the safety of (at least) several years post-high school graduation. It can be difficult to laugh at the characters or the torment on-screen when that character is you or that torment is your own. It can also be said that few high schoolers recognize their own mortal flaws. To see oneself as a transparent plastic rather than a teen queen seems contrary to conventional wisdom. However, once the battle scars have mended and the process of self-identification has begun, the film can be seen in an entirely different light.

Lindsay Lohan is hot, but no better and no worse than any other teen protagonist to flash across the silver screen. She's just a little more stacked than most seventeen year-olds. The mean girls, or plastics, could have been taken off of the pages of any high school yearbook. They're pretty, petty and shallow. Rachel McAdams seems comfortable with her position as head tormentor, although she's a tad too old to be truly believable. In my humblest of opinions, Daniel Franzese is the only teen actor that actually manages to shine. As one of the oldest of the not-so-teenage crew, he's the only one that seems to understand the pain and comedic influence of his character -- even if it is just the token teenage flamer. He can be grating at times, but his contributions are ample. Of course, Jonathan Bennett is supremely sexy and the perfect object of hormonally imbalanced teenage girls.

Teen movies have never hinged on the quality of its participants, but we've established that Mean Girls isn't an ordinary teen movie. The younger cast members don't yet have a solid comprehension of their character's relevancy or irrelevancy, so it's incumbent upon the veteran actors to hold the show together. Luckily, they're mostly Saturday Night Live veterans with plenty of cumulative experience playing their roles in one skit or another. Tim Meadows is easily the star of the show as the half-sarcastic, half-sincere principal. Tina Fey penned a nice screenplay, but delivered a slightly disappointing, almost too sappy performance. Amy Poehler flourishes in the type of role she plays best, the caricature. She's the overblown essence of a grown-up teenager reliving her youth. Ana Gasteyer is little more than wallpaper, but she still manages to make it work. Cheers to the cast for saving an otherwise bland film.

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It's sizeable comedic value aside, Mean Girls also possesses a modicum of academic style -- which I assume was maintained from Rosalind Wiseman's novel on which the film is based. Regina is the head of the school socialites. She is the pinnacle of teen royalty, hence the reason her name is derived from the Latin for queen. Some of the film's symbolism, however, lacks such subtlety. Cady's upbringing in Africa seems only to serve as a launching pad for the ubiquitous comparisons with life in the jungle. The contrast between two unforgiving worlds is quite striking; however, the heavy-handed analogies obviate the need to consider the deeper distinctions and parallels more thoroughly.

The film also touches upon the reality that such teen bitterness and elitism doesn't always end with the teenage years. We all know a Regina; no matter how young or how old we are. The artificially uplifting ending is typical of the genre. However, depending on whom you ask, Fey seemed to be striving more for satire than true, endorphin-rich closure. Besides, how else could it end?

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**Final Comments** : Mean Girls is a movie about teens, but it's not necessarily a movie for teens. If you're in the mood to laugh at the awkwardness of your high school years in traditional gut-busting SNL style, then Mean Girls is worth every bladder twisting minute.