Trailer for the movie "Bad Girls"/courtesy of Forum Film
Rating: two and a half stars/Walla! system, image processing
In about two months "Bad Girls" will mark the 20th anniversary of its release.
In real time, it is considered a particularly fun high school movie about rebellious girls (one that "has nothing significant to say about it or its aftermath", it was written about here at Vala!).
Today, those girls and boys who grew up on it know how to say that it is one of the best movies ever, and the greatest high school movie of all.
However, unlike other classics, "Bad Girls" is still in the territory of cult films for the whole family, so the people behind it (and especially Tina Fey, whose name this success is credited to) did not treat it with reverence and decided to let this franchise branch out into better and lesser products: a movie An inferior sequel, a Primark clothing line or a Walmart commercial that unites most of the original cast.
But the most outstanding of all is "Bad Girls: The Musical", which was staged on Broadway in 2018 with great success.
This week, the film version of the same musical was released in Israel.
Below is "Bad Girls", Winter 24 edition: Once upon a time there was a beautiful red-haired girl named Cady.
She grew up all her life with her mother, a researcher in the African steppes, who homeschooled her.
One day, the two returned to the United States, and Cady was thrown into a public high school, where she discovered that no lion or hyena could be more cruel than the average high school girl.
On the one hand, she befriends Damien and Janice, sarcastic and discerning gays and lesbians who map out the high school hierarchy for her.
And on the other hand, the aristocracy of the school hunted her: the Plasticity Trio, led by the glittering Regina George.
After Regina shows Cady how evil she really is, Janice and Damian convince Cady to infiltrate the Plastics, break them down from the inside, and dethrone Regina.
From the movie Bad Girls/Official Website, Jojo Whilden/Paramount, courtesy of Film Forum
On stage, "Bad Girls - The Musical" was a moving tribute for everyone who has this movie in their heart.
I am one of them.
The songs were mostly catchy and fun (with a few blunders in the ballad section), and the original Broadway cast gave work: Damien, the gay, kind-hearted friend, got a show-stealing extension to his already wonderful character;
Regina got chilling solos;
And Cady got to be much funnier than she was in 2004, when she was played by Lindsay Lohan.
There was hardly any artificial adaptation to the age of social media and political correctness: this was simply a wildly fun musical comedy that should please anyone who loved North Shore High.
So, I was surprised to see how terrible the trailers for the movie version were, and how deadly the early reviews were.
The good news: this is not a catastrophe.
The mediocre news: We didn't really need this movie.
There are precedents for films that go through this mask of repeated adaptations: they start with a film version without songs, become a stage musical, and the musical in turn receives a film adaptation.
"Crazy Little Shop", "Sweet Charity" and "Hairspray" went through the same treatment, and they are wonderful.
On the other hand, often the result is not necessarily pleasant: "The Producers" and "Nine", for example, left the audience indifferent.
Unfortunately, "Bad Girls 2024" joins the latter group.
The cinematic original stays with us because it just masquerades as a fun teen comedy.
It is actually a brilliant political drama about the futility of changing a government just for the sake of changing it, about leaders who promise a new and better future and in the end turn out to be a copy of everything they promised to change.
Rachel McAdams in the role of Regina George was one of the greatest villains in the history of cinema because she summed up for us everything that was crooked about politicians that have surrounded us for thousands of years, but she looked and acted like a gossipy and beautiful high school student.
"Bad Girls 2024" sweeps aside most of this political subtext, minimizing the wit, edginess and maturity of the 2004 edition, leaving us with a musical and not particularly clever high school comedy that adds nothing to the original except a veneer of political correctness of the kind found in the most basic series of Netflix.
From the movie Bad Girls/Official Website, Jojo Whilden/Paramount, courtesy of Film Forum
From the movie Bad Girls/Official Website, Jojo Whilden/Paramount, courtesy of Film Forum
And that could have been good enough - we have Tina Fey's humor, and the cast of actors is mostly excellent.
But the musical numbers directed by Samantha Jain and Arturo Perez just aren't engrossing.
A significant part of them looks like an amateurish version of scenes from "Euphoria", and most of them miss every opportunity to laugh, move or say something about the characters themselves.
Some of the best songs in the stage musical (most notably Damian's two solos, "Where You Belong" and "Stop") were left out of the film version entirely.
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As far as "Bad Girls 2024" is concerned as a musical in itself, it has one fundamental problem: the main diva, Anguri Rice (who appeared in the mini-series "Secrets of Easton" and "The Last Thing He Said to Me", where she was actually excellent).
Rhys plays Cady Heron, and she's just not good enough.
She's not really a singer - at least not one who can carry an entire musical on her back.
Tiktok has already been filled with users who compare the emotional and high-pitched performance of the actress Erika Henningsen, who played Cady on stage, to the one of the anonymous Rhys, who doesn't even try to sing like a musical star.
When the time comes when Cady transforms from a shuckist young lady to the new queen of the class, it is very hard to believe her.
In 2004 Lindsay Lohan was unforgettable.
In 2024, I managed to forget about Anguri Rice while she sang and danced before my eyes.
Fortunately, she is the only crooked casting in the film.
Janice, the scheming lobbyist with the dark secret, is played this time by Auli'ai Carvalho, the voice of "Moana", and she gives her soul.
Damien, one of the best of the gay boyfriend cliché, is played here by Jacqueline Spivey, who sings great, laughs and in general gives the character an interpretation that echoes another gay man that Tina Fey wrote years later: Titus Andromedon, one of the heroes of the series "Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt".
From the movie Bad Girls/Official Website, Jojo Whilden/Paramount, courtesy of Film Forum
Fay herself returns here to her role as Mrs. Norbury, the responsible adult, and unlike the original film, it seems that this time she is really somewhat responsible - and although she makes it clear that she has no interest in singing here even a single note, I was very happy to see her.
Fey is one of the funniest women in Hollywood, and this is not reflected in the script she wrote for this film, but she knows the scenes with her participation very well - just like Tim Meadows, who returns here to the role of Director Duvall.
When the two close the circle opened by the first film, I admit: I was excited.
But the only winner of the film is Renee Rapp in the role of Regina.
Rapp played the role already on Broadway, and she clearly understands the task: she's sexy, she's funny, she has the glam of a movie star and the voice of someone who might, you know, be a pop star soon.
After two seasons on the comedy The Sex Lives of College Girls, Rapp is trying to position herself as the big lesbian icon of her time, an actress/singer with a big mouth and a "what's up" attitude, and on one side of the Internet it's working just fine.
It's possible that in a few years we might find out that this was just the beginning, but it's hard to really understand it from the film: there's something almost comical about the contrast between the amateurishness with which "Bad Girls 2024" was made and the polished performance of rap.
2004's "Bad Girls" is a masterpiece.
The stage version was a great joy, but in the transition to the big screen it is all too easy to see its flaws - and the fact that it is directed with the skill of the third most talented boy in the film major surely does not help.
The best moments of the new version are those that mention and specifically refer to the one that came out 20 years ago.
In principle, I would suggest you just go back to it, because it hasn't gotten old in a day - but if there is already a new movie, the passionate fans can give it a chance.
It can simply wait for home viewing as well, accompanied by a bottle of wine and some friends who won't hesitate to shout the quotes at the screen with you.
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