Cady Heron is a sixteen year old who has spent most of her life in Africa with her parents, anthropologists and wildlife experts who have spent years in the field studying animals and their social habits. Returning to the States she enlists in North Shore High School in a small town near Chicago, Illinois. Meeting two students, Janis Ian and Damien, they soon introduce her to all the cliques operating in the school and their status in the pecking order, the most prominent of which is The Plastics, led by the fiercely competitive Regina George with her acolytes Gretchen Wieners and Karen Smith. Determined to be the most popular girl in the school, Regina maintains her position by instigating poisonous whispering campaigns against anyone she falls out with, Janis previously having been on the receiving end of such a vindictive grudge. When Regina wants Cady to join The Plastics, Janis urges her to join up so she can find out the group’s darkest secrets. Cady uses her knowledge of group dynamics to turn Gretchen and Karen against her and plans to derail her attempt to become prom queen, and also starts dating Aaron Samuels, who she developed a crush on when first seeing him and who is also Regina’s ex. But The Plastics start to influence Cady and she begins to become as spiteful and self-centred as them, something which Janis and Damien realise when she shuns them. Discovering that Cady is trying to take her place as the most popular girl in the school, and has also started to date Aaron, Regina distributes copies of a pamphlet in which The Plastics note unpleasant and spiteful things about fellow students and teachers, several of which were contributed by Cady, but the affair escalates when one of the false accusations, that one of their teachers, Ms.Norbury, is a drug dealer, leads to her being investigated by the Police. Cady takes the blame for the pamphlet, claiming that it was all her idea. Prom night approaches and Cady declines to go, instead competing in an inter-school maths quiz, eventually winning on a tie-break question, but it is when she returns to the school that Cady realises just what has happened in her absence. A surprise hit in the US, chugging along in the top five of the box-office for several weeks and having stronger ‘legs’ than several other much higher-budgeted offerings, Mean Girls reunites star Lindsey Lohan and director Mark W.Walters from the equally well received Walt Disney remake of Freaky Friday, and the script is adapted from the bestselling book, pitched as a survival guide to the perils and social dynamics of high school for young girls. Scripter is Tina Fey, a Saturday Night Live writer and performer, and while there are some sly observations on the pecking order of high school and the problems of acceptance, too often the script goes for the easy option, and there is notably actually no one truly nasty or unlikeable in the entire cast, writer Fey also giving herself a major role as teacher Ms.Norbury. Lohan is a sparky and likable performer, obviously being groomed for the long term by Disney, and Walters shows he can handle ‘family’ material with wit and intelligence, even if there is nothing to suggest that the peer pressure and the forming of cliques actually causes genuine teenage pain, and a couple of the gags, such as a character named ‘Janis Ian’, named after an artist who had her chart hits before the movie’s target audience were even born, seem to appeal to a clique of their own. The fact that this is 180 degrees away from CGI-fuelled blockbusters such as Troy and Van Helsing,. and made with an occasionally surprisingly perceptive wit, may be the reasons why it seems to have found an appreciative audience.