BEFORE: Adventures in high school continue. Linking from "Can't Hardly Wait", Jerry O'Connell was also in "Scary Movie V" with Lindsay Lohan, which seems like a strange thing for me to take advantage of.
THE PLOT: Cady Heron is a hit with The Plastics, the A-list girl clique at her new school, until she makes the mistake of falling for Aaron Samuels, the ex-boyfriend of alpha Plastic Regina George.
AFTER: See, I do occasionally take recommendations from my friends about what to watch...
We used to have a film called "Heathers", which was one of those high-school clique movies - the sort of plain girl ditches her plainer friend in order to infiltrate the "popular girl" circle, and sees a chance to take them down from within. It's a dark movie because several teen characters die, but still sort of funny if you dig that sort of thing.
Honestly, this film seems like it's sort of modeled after that, only without so much death, and focusing more on the relationships between high-school girls - the way they tend to put each other down and stab each other in the back, try to get with each other's boyfriends, and navigate the social and sexual politics of the community formed by people who just happened to be born in the same town.
A new girl (moving to town after being home-schooled in Africa, which seems like an odd plot point) tries to find her place in the social network, and in doing so ends up pitting one girl against another, and eventually bringing the whole system down. All for a lark, and an inability to admit that she's good at schoolwork and belongs on the Math team.
I was on my school's math team - though I didn't really understand much math after algebra, I still got the work done. Trigonometry and Calculus, I just didn't see the point. Who freaking cares what a cosecant is, or what the area is under the curve - when am I ever going to need to know how much area is under a goddamn curve? And then I need to figure out the derivative of the curve - why?
I always say if I had to go back and do high-school again, I'd do it differently. I didn't care what my social standing was, and I was a conscientious objector in the "battle of the sexes" back then. I probably should have spent more time trying to date girls, but they were like an alien species to me until just before I graduated college.
Anyway, the film is sufficiently funny as things spiral out of control, and portrays that women are complicated, emotional creatures who often don't support each other enough, whereas guys just don't care about such things, and just want to play sports and get laid. Fair enough.
Also starring Rachel McAdams (last seen in "Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows"), Tina Fey (last heard in "Megamind"), Lacey Chabert (last heard in "Anastasia"), Tim Meadows (last seen in "Grown Ups"), Jonathan Bennett, Amanda Seyfried (last seen in "In Time"), Lizzy Caplan (last seen in "Cloverfield"), Ana Gasteyer, Neill Flynn, Amy Poehler (last heard in "Alvin & the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked"), Daniel Franzese.
RATING: 6 out of 10 candy canes
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