Image copyright © by Marcus Trahan

Mean Girls

(2004)

Every once in a while in the continual eruption of primordial stink that are “teen-age” movies, somebody gets it right. Clueless was one. This is another. Lindsey Lohan is 16, home-schooled in Africa all her life, and now has to cope with … High School! Africa was a piece of cake by comparison. She hasn’t a clue about the anthropology of American teenagers. She eventually gets involved in bringing down the Plastics, the dominant girl clique, the alpha females. In the process, she finds she sort of likes being an alpha female, and starts behaving as bad as any of them. Naturally, she sees the error of her ways, but it is all handled very well. The script by Tina Fey is sharp and witty, there is a fine sense of the ridiculous. We laughed a lot.