Mean Girls (2024) Film Review

New student Cady Heron gets welcomed into the top of the social food chain by an elite group of popular girls called the Plastics, ruled by the conniving queen bee Regina George. However, when Cady makes the major misstep of falling for Regina’s ex-boyfriend, she soon finds herself caught in their crosshairs.

Mean Girls (2024) is directed by Samantha Jayne and Arturo Perez Jr. which is both of their directorial debut. The movie is based on the Broadway musical of the same name which is based on Mark Waters’s Mean Girls (2004).

It should go without saying that Mean Girls (2004) has built a massive following over the years, it’s a hilarious movie that still holds up today and is a prime example of high school film done right. I can’t comment on the quality of the Broadway show since I haven’t seen it, but it’s worth mentioning I know some people who liked it and others who did not. Despite the trailers not being very good for Mean Girls (2024) the movie itself is actually not bad, it definitely is heavily flawed which we will get into why. But I was decently surprised of how it turned out

For starters, I’m sure this has been repeated countless times in other reviews but it needs to be said how excellent Reneé Rapp really is as Regina George. Almost immediately when she enters the movie she completely captures what made Rachel McAdams’s portrayal so great, she puts in this natural feel that is striking, genuinely funny and has beautiful as well as exciting screen presence. Rapp captured this more modern Regina George while also having the spirit of the original, it’s truly great to see and definitely think Rapp’s performance is one of the highlights of the movie.

Auli’l Cravalho as Janis is quite great as well, while the script doesn’t change her character that much Cravalho is able to make it work with her acting which is quite great. Tim Meadows and Tina Fey reprise their roles from the original, both of which are quite great, they do the same sort of thing they did in the original movie but it’s nice to see them back.

The musical element of the movie is pretty great especially combined with the choreography and each of the songs matching the tone of each of the scenes, granted I don’t think any of the songs hit it out of the park. But they are fun to watch and are quite entertaining in their own right. Once again Reneé Rapp truly shines here.

Honestly the major problem here is the movie heavily relies on the original, it reuses a lot of the same scenes, same dialogue and even same jokes. While it is nice to see some of those iconic scenes and moments again, it does feel a bit cheap like the movie is holding back from doing something different. It’s a bit frustrating because that really does not give you a whole lot to comment on, sure there are a few moments where the movie does make certain scenes it’s own by putting it’s own twist on it. But it’s not enough to really say that the movie is much different from the original.

Despite that however I do think Mean Girls (2024) is decently fun, I’m sure this will go on to be somewhat of a cult hit especially by younger audiences. It’s a great time that I do think could have been better.

Mean Girls (2024) is playing in theaters.

6/10 C+

Dicks: The Musical (2023) Movie Review

Two self-obsessed businessmen discover they’re long-lost identical twins and come together to plot the reunion of their eccentric, divorced parents.

Dicks: The Musical is a film on the off-Broadway musical Fucking identical Twins by Josh Sharp and Aaron Jackson who are also the leads of the film. The film is directed by Larry Charles who directed Borat, The Dictator, Bruno and a few others, Charles mostly goes into satire with his films and there’s plenty of satire in Dicks: The Musical although it’s not very good.

Aaron Jackson and Josh Sharp are actually quite entertaining here and their singing voices are genuinely pretty entertaining, some of the music has no business being as good as it is the prime example being “No One Understands Us” and “You Can’t Give Up” two songs that are pretty much poking fun of the moments in a musical when the main character is at their lowest point. Both songs are genuinely entertaining and the scenes they are used for matches they completely well.

Megan Thee Stallion is actually not bad here either, granted she isn’t given a whole lot to do but she does get song “Out Alpha The Alpha” which is another pretty solid song here, the whole sequence of her song is perhaps the most memorable of the movie as well as the most fun.

Unfortunately that’s where the positives end because everything else in this movie is either not funny, repetitive or falls flat, the humor itself unfortunately is a lot of the same jokes just repeated every 10 minutes. The rest of the songs are incredibly forgettable and while I do get the point that they aren’t supposed to be good, and that would be fine if the rest of the music was entertaining and genuinely funny which is not the case here.

I’m not sure what really happened here because Larry Charles has made some great satire in the past especially with Borat, so it’s very frustrating to see this movie be this forgettable.

Dicks: The Musical is available on all VOD platforms.

4/10 D+

Flora and Son is a beautiful film about music and it’s connections.

Single mom Flora is at a loss about what to do with her rebellious teenage son, Max. Her efforts to keep him out of trouble lead to a beat-up acoustic guitar, a washed-up LA musician, and harmony for this frayed Dublin family.

Flora and Son is directed by John Carney a director who is known for his musical drama films such as Begin Again (2013), Once (2007) and Sing Street (2016). Flora and Son might not be that much different than his other films but everything that makes his previous musical drama films so likable is here in Flora and Son.

The performances all around are quite great the standouts being Eve Hewson, Orén Kinlan, Jack Reynor and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. They all deliver emotional and quite touching performances, as well as having beautiful singing voices that deliver some really strong songs including Dubin07 (really caught me by surprise on how catchy it was), Meet in the Middle and High Life all three of which are beautifully put together and fit the film incredibly well.

The story itself is very familiar if you have seen Carney’s previous work which I’m actually okay with, he still has this theme of showing the beauty of music and how it brings us together and much like in his other films he nails that down quite well. We also get to see the theme of crafting music from two people who have different music styles, Flora (played by Eve Hewson) is seen trying to learn about the guitar and likes love songs while her son Max (played by Orén Kinlan) is more into electronic dance music. We get to see two songs that Flora and Max craft and perform together which is some of the film’s best moments.

There’s tons of character moments particularly with the beautiful mother and son drama that Flora and Max have, we get some of Jeff’s (played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt) character development through his interactions with Flora and through his songs as well. Flora and Son is truly a beautiful film that you can tell quite easily had a lot of heart poured into it.

If you liked John Carney’s previous work you are most definitely going to really like Flora and Son!

Flora and Son is available on Apple TV+

8/10 B+

World’s Best is a fun Disney+ Original filled with heart.

In the midst of navigating the hardships of adolescence, 12-year-old Prem Patel discovers his deceased father was a rapper. He sets out to pursue a career for himself as a rap superstar and is determined to find out if hip-hop is in his DNA.

Got to say I’m a bit surprised from World’s Best, while it does fall into the typical Disney+ movie hole where it does end up feeling like a Disney Channel Original Movie. There’s a genuine amount of fun to be had here with this one.

Utkarsh Ambudkar is a whole lot of fun here and really puts his all into a performance that may not always give him the best material, but during the music segments he takes advantage of it and really pulls some great moments. Manny Magnus is a solid lead and does a pretty solid job of making his character feel quite grounded in a lot of ways, it will be interesting to see where his career goes.

The rest of the cast while not anything necessarily amazing, they get the job done and are genuinely charming as well. As I said before World’s Best can feel like a Disney channel original movie at times with the script being the main culprit plus some of the humor isn’t quite great either. Granted it is less noticeable as a lot of other Disney+ original movies, the movie itself does follow a lot of story beats about a child (in this case son) who wants to follow the footsteps of their deceased parent (in this case father).

But what makes this one standout a bit more is the direction from Roshan Sethi (who previously directed 7 Days), he brings a handful of heartwarming moments that are just enough to push the movie over the finish line. It has a lot of heart and does manage to make some of the characters feel a bit more grounded.

Overall World’s Best is flawed but a quite charming movie that doesn’t overstay it’s welcome.

World’s Best is available on Disney+

6/10 C+

The Little Mermaid (2023) is a fun remake with a strong performance from Halle Bailey!

The youngest of King Triton’s daughters, Ariel is a beautiful and spirited young mermaid with a thirst for adventure. Longing to find out more about the world beyond the sea, Ariel visits the surface and falls for the dashing Prince Eric. Following her heart, she makes a deal with the evil sea witch, Ursula, to experience life on land.

I’m going to skip over the whole conversation about Disney’s Live Action Remakes since I already briefly talked about it in my Peter Pan & Wendy review last month, anyway The Little Mermaid had me a bit worried. When the trailer dropped myself and a few others said that Halle Bailey would be the standout but mostly everything else would fall flat, it’s a common pattern that happens with a lot of these live action remakes. However as I said before in my reviews I like to be proven wrong when it comes to film and to my surprise…The Little Mermaid did just that.

The Little Mermaid is very flawed, the underwater parts don’t exactly look all that great as there are moments where the CGI is very noticeable. Javier Bardem gives a pretty poor performance as King Triton, Jacob Tremblay as Flounder is a very lifeless performance and Awkwafina as Scuttle is yet another addition to her bad performances post The Farewell. I’m not going to on a huge rant about the rap Awkwafina sings in the movie. I really don’t have that much to say about it, it’s bad of course but it’s not the worst thing I’ve ever heard. To be quite honest I found it more unnecessary and very unfitting than bad, it comes right out of nowhere and ends shortly after and is never spoken of again.

Now moving on to what really worked for the movie, let’s start with of course Halle Bailey who was the standout. Her film career is going to go very far and it really shows here, she captures the spirit of Ariel while bringing her own direction to the character, her acting really shines through when the film goes to the land portion of the film. Her screen presence is genuinely charming and she naturally connects with the rest of the cast, even if I didn’t like some of the other performances such as Awkwafina or Tremblay there is absolutely no denying that she connects with them easily.

Daveed Diggs as Sebastian took me a little bit to get used to, but he really did a great job. His version of Under The Sea is a whole lot of fun and he really does capture the character quite well, Melissa McCarthy as Ursula was also pretty solid obviously there is no topping Pat Carroll (voiced Ursula in the original) who delivered one of my favorite performances of all time. With that said I do think McCarthy did a pretty good job with what she was given, absolutely far better than some other depictions of iconic Disney villains (looking at you Jafar from Aladdin (2019). Finally there’s Art Malik who plays Grimsby, he’s genuinely fun and is just a very charming character. He’s a prime example of a fun side character that gets the job done quite well.

The music was surprisingly pretty great, I say surprisingly because yes while Rob Marshall director of Chicago (one of my favorite films) is in the director’s chair. This is Disney we are talking about, the music in these live action remakes have always been a hit or miss or some movies will have a few good songs and the rest would just be very forgettable. However that wasn’t the case here with The Little Mermaid, minus the previously mentioned rap. The rest of the songs are pretty well done renditions of the original songs, Under The Sea is a lot of fun, Kiss The Girl is one of the film’s highlights and Part Of Your World is truly fantastic due to Halle Bailey’s powerful singing voice. Which is why the music works so well the singing voices are truly great especially Halle Bailey who as I said before has a tremendous singing voice.

Lastly there’s Rob Marshall’s direction, his approach of “if it isn’t broken don’t fix it” is truly effective here, especially in terms of story. Rob Marshall’s touches on the music is absolutely felt here and he really does a fantastic job of connecting the cast to one another, there’s some genuinely well done moments of chemistry between Halle Bailey and Jonah Hauer-King.

Overall The Little Mermaid (2023) is quite solid, it’s definitely flawed but it’s a genuinely fun little film that manages to be a lot better than a lot of the other live action remakes.

The Little Mermaid is currently in theaters.

7/10 B

The Magic Flute has it’s moments of interesting tunes.

Follows 17-year-old Tim Walker as he travels from London to the Austrian Alps to attend the legendary Mozart boarding school. There, he discovers a centuries-old forgotten passageway into the fantastic world of Mozart’s “The Magic Flute.”

The Magic Flute is a German musical fantasy film that is based on the 1791 opera of the same name, I have to give credit where credit is due this movie is completely not what I expected.

The movie is an opera which I have to say some of the singing voices are quite great, there really isn’t anything here that I’m going to remember for years to come or actively listen to. But it does get the job done and at the very least is a bit different from other fantasy movies, Jack Wolfe is definitely standout when it comes to acting, I can absolutely see his career evolve as it goes on.

What mainly hurts this movie is that it does go on for way too long it’s 124 minutes long and unfortunately the pacing doesn’t really help at all, some scenes overstay their welcome. The opera scenes are by far the most interesting but the rest of the movie falls into the “seen it and done far better” category.

With that said I don’t think The Magic Flute is necessarily bad, it’s competently made, has some decent filming and the writing does have some great moments that do have some emotion to it. A lot of it just falls in very familiar territory that is outclassed by several other movies.

The Magic Flute is available on all VOD platforms.

5/10 C

Praise This is a inoffensive Pitch Perfect clone.

A young woman with dreams of being a superstar joins an underdog Atlanta praise-team choir in the lead up to the national competition.

Praise This is what you get when you mix Pitch Perfect and Jesus together, it has a praise team in a competition and story beats you will easily recognize from other movies.

Chloe Bailey is hands down the best part about the film, she is very talented and especially when she gets to sing. She also gives a pretty solid performance in the acting department as well, she takes the script which admittedly is on the weaker side and does the most she can with it.

There’s a few jokes here that work decently well and the first half of the movie is pretty solid for what it is. It’s mostly the second half that really starts to follow several story beats some of which are very similar to Pitch Perfect, I will give it credit that the movie isn’t preachy with it’s religious themes (it’s not even that religious to be quite honest.)

The movie does turn some songs into gospel or worship songs such as Cardi B’s “Money” some are definitely more noticeable than others, but they never get to the point of being KIDZ BOP level of bad.

Honestly there really isn’t much more to say, if you have seen Pitch Perfect or any of these other singing competition movies (heck some dance movies are a lot like this too) you have already seen Praise This. However if you are a Chloe Bailey fan I do think you will really like this one.

Praise This is available on Peacock.

5/10 C

Matilda: The Musical is a fun little movie.

Matilda, an extraordinary girl armed with a sharp mind and a vivid imagination, dares to take a stand against her oppressive parents and head teacher to change her story with miraculous results.

Honestly the more I thought about Matilda: The Musical the more I actually thought it wasn’t too bad. There really isn’t a whole lot to say here as it does play out as expected, but I will say between the performances that are actually pretty decent particularly Lashana Lynch and Emma Thompson who both give really fun and very strong performances. Emma Thompson really captures what made Miss Trenchbull so terrible from the original film really well, there’s also the music that’s actually quite great. The music isn’t really my cup of tea but I absolutely won’t deny that it’s very enjoyable and did get me to sing-along at times (outside of the baffling opening), the movie does run for a bit too long it clocks in for nearly 2 hours where at times you really do feel like the movie has run for a bit too long. Having that said the music, performances and some of the jokes are enough to keep the viewer entertained, this isn’t going to be something I’ll ever come back to but it’s an overall decent watch.

Matilda: The Musical is available on Netflix.

7/10 B

Beauty and the Beast 30th Celebration is half a movie.

In honour of the 30th anniversary of the animated classic, the cast and crew put on a blended special showcase of “Beauty and the Beast”, along with new musical performances, sets and costumes inspired by the classic story.

I was debating on whether or not to give the Beauty and the Beast 30th celebration but decided to since I love the original film so much, anyway this celebration isn’t exactly good. H.E.R. has her debut acting role here and she does quite a great job as Belle, her performance isn’t anything groundbreaking but she does capture some of the charm of the movie and makes it her own, Josh Groban has the excellent voice to back him up from the terrible Beast costume, Martin Short is fun as always, the songs are pretty great and stay quite true to the original movie. All the classics are here from Beauty and the Beast, to The Mob Song, Something There and heck even Evermore is here that one song that completely stole the show from the 2017 live action version that’s really neat! Everything else however is pretty rough, for starters I’m not entirely sure why they weren’t committed to making this into a complete live action stage show, half of the movie is just scenes from the animated film. We miss out on a lot of moments that I’m sure the cast would have nailed had they been given the opportunity, it’s just sort of that moment where if I wanted to watch the animated film I would put on the animated film. It’s nice to see Rita Moreno here and she tells a little history about Beauty and the Beast however all of it is common knowledge that can be easily looked up with Wikipedia articles, the storyboard art was at least pretty interesting and not something you see everyday. As for the rest it plays out the story we all know and love, I wouldn’t say this was bad but this was a very lacking 30th celebration that could have went a lot harder.

Beauty and the Beast: A 30th Celebration is available on Disney+

5/10 C

Pinocchio is a dark and beautiful film with the theme of life.

A father’s wish magically brings a wooden boy to life in Italy, giving him a chance to care for the child.

Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio was a project that I have been following for a very long time now, Del Toro is one of my favorite filmmakers ever and hearing him take on Pinocchio is just a match made in heaven. Let’s start out with the obvious…the stop motion animation, it’s absolutely gorgeous in every single way possible. There’s so much detail to the backgrounds, the characters facial expressions that really tell the story even with the more quite moments they don’t need to say any words to tell the viewer how they feel at all. There’s truly this magical aspect to the stop motion animation that’s both gorgeously dark yet filled to the brim with heart. That’s a huge running theme about Pinocchio it’s a beautifully dark film with a lot of heart that’s main theme is life itself. The film takes place during fascist Italy during the interwar period and World War II which it makes that clear in the beginning with a very sad but truly powerful scene that David Bradley absolutely masters, speaking of which the voice cast is truly brilliant here Gregory Mann, David Bradley and Ewan McGregor give some of the best performances of the year, they each bring so much heart into the film that just moves you to tears. There’s so many scenes here that truly have a human feel to them Tilda Swinton who plays The Wood Spirit has some of the best scenes of the film, her interactions with Pinocchio are truly thought provoking and really make the whole film’s theme about life that much more interesting. There’s so many moments that truly move the viewer to tears, there’s this element of wanting to be belonged that I’m sure many people have felt at some point in their life. Guillermo Del Toro and Mark Gustafson truly reflects this with their direction, they create a very spiritual fairytale yet at the same time create something very human like with a lot of very real themes that a lot of people tend to think about.

Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio is available on Netflix.

10/10 A+