This highly-anticipated on screen adaptation of Mean Girls: The Musical, from award-winning writer Tina Fey, hit theaters on January 12, ahead of the long Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday weekend. Despite a robust $28 million turnout for Paramount’s hopeful smash, Mean Girls disappointed many returning and would-be fans with a frenetic plotline and sloppy, disjointed transitions.

Criticism aside, the film managed to achieve two noteworthy goals in reshaping this classic: increased diversity in casting and high energy in production. The original Mean Girls (2004) was comprised of a primarily white cast, so it was refreshing to see new groups represented in this story. The addition of Avantika and Auliʻi Cravalho were particularly good.

The energy through the film was consistent…ly frenetic. It was exhausting to sit through repeated scene transitions, from high energy dance numbers to high speed montages back to high energy dance numbers. Musical scenes should add substance and impact to story and character development, but they felt like fluff or filler, serving only to distract from the shallow plot.

Writer Tina Fey and directors Samantha Jayne and Arturo Perez Jr. had a noble goal. They tried to deliver the moral of Mean Girls to the next generation that crudely judging others is not character-building– a message as relevant today as it was in 2004. It just would’ve been more palatable if it had not been drowned in confetti and drowned out by too many chaotic musical scenes. Perhaps they should have followed Regina George’s own advice: “Stop trying to make fetch happen.”

5/10