The 2004 comedy Mean Girls— about Cady Heron’s attempt to infiltrate a superficial clique
at her new high school — is a bona fide classic, popular with both girls and guys.
But guys may tend to see things in the movie’s plot that girls might not notice at first
glance.
Keeping quiet
The old saying goes that a gentleman never tells, but we all know how rare it actually
is for a guy to keep quiet.
Guys tend to brag about their flings, generally to impress their friends and colleagues, even
if it's not exactly gentleman-like.
And that's why it was a surprise that it took Jonathan Bennett’s high school hunk Aaron
so long to find out his girlfriend Regina was cheating on him every Thursday with her
ex-boyfriend Shane.
Cady spends so much time during the movie trying to get Aaron to walk in on Regina and
Shane in order to sabotage their relationship, but, in real life, no stunt this elaborate
would ever have been necessary.
A guy like Shane would have blabbed about his affair with Regina to every last one of
his buddies — she is the Queen Bee, after all — and word would have spread around
the school like wildfire.
That's just how these things seem to work.
Let’s hear it for the boys
One of the biggest complaints about female characters on the big screen tends to be that
they’re poorly written.
While male protagonists are often fully fleshed out, their female counterparts are usually
one-dimensional and underdeveloped.
It's sad, but it’s true.
In Mean Girls, however, that rule gets flipped on its head.
The female characters are interesting and complex, while the male characters, for the
most part, are kind of just there.
Aaron isn't interesting or funny.
He's not exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer either, as pointed out by Cady.
“So what did you get for this one?”
“Well, the first time I did it, I got a zero.”
“Wrong.”
“Then, when I checked it, I got 1.”
“There you go.”
Meanwhile, Cady's dad and Principal Duvall are both kind of pushovers.
Remember how oblivious Cady's old man comes off when he tries to punish her?
Or how in over his head Principal Duvall seems with the madness going on at his school?
All in all, not the most likable bunch.
Only Damien appears to have some modicum of personality.
“That’s why her hair is so big.
It’s full of secrets!”
A bad sport
Okay, so maybe it’s unfair to pick on Aaron so much.
He does seem like an okay guy for the most part.
It’s just difficult to get past the fact that he’s supposed to be a jock — despite
looking more than a little unathletic during his one sports-related scene.
“Hey!”
He looks like a guy who hasn't exactly played soccer for very long, if at all — despite
the fact that he's supposed to be a senior on the team.
It's also implied that Aaron is a member of the swim team, despite the audience never
actually seeing him competing in the pool.
Then again, if his swimming was anything like his soccer, it’s probably for the best.
The end
If there's one part of Mean Girls that guys might have trouble stomaching, it's the movie’s
hugely cheesy ending.
When Cady is named Spring Fling queen, she opts to deliver a nearly two-minute-long speech
in front of her classmates that oozes with sappiness, complete with dramatic background
music.
“I mean, I think everyone looks like royalty tonight.”
Just to really hit you on the nose with it all, she also breaks down her crown and passes
the pieces out to the crowd.
Oh, and her parents are also there, just so we can see how proud they are of her for putting
aside her differences with her classmates.
The only redeemable part of the whole thing is Principal Duvall interrupting Cady to let
her know a speech isn't actually required, which is at least an acknowledgement of the
ridiculousness of it all in keeping with the movie’s ironic, tongue-in-cheek tone.
Regina’s lacrosse thing
At the end of Mean Girls, we’re told that Regina eventually found her calling in lacrosse.
She channels her aggression into the sport and is shown roughing up defenders with her
elbow and lacrosse stick on the way to scoring a goal.
But there’s no way would that sort of behavior would ever fly in real life.
Any half-decent referee would have called a foul on Regina for striking her opponents
in the face and immediately sent her off with a red card.
Of course, this is just a movie — so Regina is able to celebrate the goal with her teammates,
enjoying the happy ending that — let's be honest — she didn't really deserve.