543. Mean Girls 2 (2011)

Starring: Meaghan Martin, Donn Lamkin, Linden Ashby

Director: Melanie Mayron

Running Time: 96 mins

Mean Girls 2 is an American film, and the sequel to Mean Girls, that features the return of the Plastics as they do social battle with a new girl at school in an attempt to prevent the rise of a new clique, and the downfall of their own.

Well, although this is still a terribly unfunny film, it’s actually better than the first Mean Girls! I despised that film because of its consistently annoying atmosphere and lack of good fun jokes, and while this doesn’t perform too highly in terms of comedy, it manages to avoid the horrifically irritating vibe that the first film gave out.

Starting with the level of comedy, this film was pretty appalling, probably less funny than the first instalment. With relatively mediocre actors and a predictable storyline, there was little that this movie could do to be properly funny, and although it has one or two laughs in it, it’s not going to remembered for its comedy any time soon.

The story was again very predictable. It takes an almost identical form to the first film, which means that you can see absolutely everything that’s coming in terms of the overall plot, however even the smaller details in which this differs from the first are still terribly predictable.

But, the story is one of the first points where this actually improves on the previous film. Rather than the tale of an already annoying girl turning into an even more annoying girl by joining forces with The Plastics, this follows a much more likeable protagonist at the start, who gradually becomes even nicer, before descending into a hypocritical girl as her clique becomes the exact mirror image of her social enemies.

However, that story line was a little more interesting than the easy cop out the first film does by moving the main character between sides, as you actually got some sort of internal emotional conflict for the protagonist.

Also, the fact that Lindsay Lohan was not in this film made a huge difference. Her performance in Mean Girls was perhaps the most frustrating thing I’ve ever witnessed, but the actress, Meaghan Martin, who played the main character, was a whole lot more likeable, as was her character from the start, making here a lot more supportable.

Overall, then, I’ll give this a 4.7, because despite being desperately unfunny and predictable, it was a surprisingly better adaptation of the first film that avoided too much annoyance.