Mean Girls Mark Waters

Box-office

In its opening weekend, Mean Girls grossed $24.4 million from 3,159 screens[28] at 2,839 theaters in the United States, ranking number one at the box office and averaging $8,606 per venue.[2] The film closed on September 9, 2004, grossing $86.1 million domestically and $43 million internationally for a total worldwide gross of $129 million.[2] Paramount said the audience was 75% female, and 50% was under the age of 18. Over 90% of moviegoers rated the picture either "excellent" or "very good", and positive notices remained strong even outside the target demographic; ratings were over 80% positive from men in their thirties.[29]

Critical response

Mean Girls received largely positive reviews; critics lauded Lohan's and McAdams's performances and labeled the film as Seyfried and Caplan's breakthrough roles. Review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes gives the film an approval rating of 84% based on 214 reviews, with an average rating of 6.90/10. The site's critical consensus states: "Elevated by a brilliant screenplay and outstanding ensemble cast, Mean Girls finds fresh, female-fronted humor in the high school experience."[30] On Metacritic, the film has a score of 66 out of 100, based on 39 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[31] Audiences polled by CinemaScore, gave the film an average grade of "A−" on an A+ to F scale.[32]

Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film three stars out of four, writing: "In a wasteland of dumb movies about teenagers, Mean Girls is a smart and funny one."[33] Ann Hornaday of The Washington Post wrote that it "boasts a one-two-three punch in star Lindsay Lohan, screenwriter Tina Fey and director Mark Waters, and, indeed, it delivers a knockout".[34] The screenplay was highly praised by critics with Peter Travers of Rolling Stone calling it "comic gold".[35][33] In April 2004, Mick LaSalle of SFGate wrote, "as in The House of Yes and Freaky Friday, Waters keeps it wild but real", noting that "all the supporting performances go right to the edge of absurdity without crossing the line into random zaniness."[36] Entertainment Weekly put it on its end-of-the-decade "best-of" list, saying: "'Fetch' may never happen, but 2004's eminently quotable movie is still one of the sharpest high school satires ever. Which is pretty grool, if you ask me!"[37] In 2006, Entertainment Weekly had also named it the 12th-best high school film of all time: "While Mean Girls is technically a comedy, its depiction of girl-on-girl cattiness stings incredibly true."[38] In 2012, Rotten Tomatoes included the film in its "Top 50 Greatest Teen Comedies" list.[39] In 2021, Marie Claire ranked Mean Girls as the best 2000s movie, calling it "the '00s pop culture staple".[40]

In March 2021, Richard Brody of The New Yorker ranked Lohan's performance in the film as the eleventh best of the 21st century up to that point, praising her "blend of charisma and awkwardness, innocence and guile" as well as "faux-casual earnestness" she used for dialogue.[41] In 2022, Rolling Stone ranked Mean Girls as the twentieth greatest comedy of the 21st century, saying: "Tina Fey established herself as one of America's best comedy writers courtesy of this instant teen-movie classic, which boasts one of the most quotable scripts of the past 20 years",[42] while Indie Wire ranked it as the fifteenth best comedy of the 21st century, calling the script "effortlessly funny, but what makes the film truly timeless has more to do with the actors' ability to find the human grace notes amid the absurd high school hijinks (Kälteen Bars, anyone?) and instant-classic one-liners ("That's so fetch"). It's a high school comedy with broad genre humor and specific insight into teenage anxieties, and for that it stands the test of time."[43] In October 2022, The Independent also included Lohan's role in a list of "outstanding performances", stating that she "gives a pretty flawless performance, dexterously balancing the film's irreverent comic tone with moments of occasional pathos."[44]