“On October 3rd, he asked me what day it was.”
“It’s October third.”
If you haven’t heard of Mean Girls yet, how many rocks have you been living under your whole life?
Mean Girls is one of the best films of the 2000s and nothing comes close. If you say no, here’s your Go To Jail card. Do Not Pass Go. Do Not Collect $200.
I bet when we saw the trailer for this, we all thought it was just another dumb teenage movie. I know it. You know it. Everyone knows it. When the movie was released, I just started high school, so I thought the movie would just be funny and not that serious but after watching, I related a bit to the movie. And now in 2023, I can say it’s one of the smartest movies about teenagers with teenage problems. When I say smart, I don’t mean the characters in the movie were smart, but they were smartly written, by none other than Tina Fey, one of the best comedy writers in all of Hollywood. She wrote this movie from scratch, loosely based on the 2002 Rosalind Wiseman book, Queen Bees and Wannabes, and she also borrowed elements from her own experiences in high school and named most of the characters after her real-life friends. I mean if I’m going to write about a movie about high school, I would use high school experiences, from other people. Not from me, that’s a black hole you don’t want to jump into.
But anyway, moving on. Obviously, it smashed the box-office Rotten Tomatoes gave the film an 84% and put this film in their “Top 50 Greatest Teen Comedies” list. Not bad for a “dumb movie about teenagers and their problems.” Everyone liked it, and so did you.
This movie came out in 2004, but we’re still talking about the movie in 2023. That says something great right? Well, it did help that people on the interwebs were using quotes from the movie as memes and even made a day about it. October 3rd is #MeanGirlsDay. It’s not just the kids today that use them, even the kids back then are still using them now. Even me.
I mean, I’m not using “fetch” in every sentence I say, because I know that ain’t happening, but you know what’s happening? Mean Girls references everywhere, from Mariah Carey’s “Obsessed” (yes, this song was inspired by Regina’s George’s epic quote), to even the White House, when they posted this in 2014:
Bo, stop trying to make fetch happen. pic.twitter.com/Ez6hWGFpFc
— White House Archived (@ObamaWhiteHouse) August 13, 2013
And this by far was the best in 2018, the Embassy of Israel responded to a tweet (or post? Make your mind X/Twitter) to the Mad Mullahs of Iran. Embassy? More like emba-sassy!
— Embassy of Israel to the USA (@IsraelinUSA) June 4, 2018
Whether you already watched the movie or not, today’s your annual reminder to watch it. Mean Girls even took it upon themselves as a self-service to put up the movie on their official TikTok page for free! I mean maybe just today, so watch it before it goes away again and you’ll have to resort to pirating it somewhere.
https://www.tiktok.com/@meangirls/video/7285582812676148523
So what are you waiting for? Watch the movie, appreciate the great writing, and the small look on 2000s culture, and make fetch great again! M-F-G-A! Don’t worry, we’ll work on a better name next time.