Mean Girls/Godsend: Wee smirk o' the

Mean Girls

By Anthony Allison

Don't expect an Election or a Rushmore. But as high school comedies go, Mean Girls is above average--even if that is a very backhanded compliment in a genre whose GPA is generally abysmal.

But Freaky Friday director Mark Water's new satire has enough acerbic wit and risqué sidebars (a spoof sex-ed class, a teacher accused of dealing drugs, a coach guilty of sexual misconduct with underage students) that it makes you wonder how it managed to fall through the cracks, to emerge relatively unscathed from the focus-group and PG-13-rating dictates of the Hollywood homogenization machine.

Perhaps it's due, in part, to the presence on set of "SNL" veteran Tina Fey, who adapted Rosalind Wiseman's book Queen Bees and Wannabes, and also plays a calculating calculus teacher.

It's also due to some fun supporting performances--Fey's fellow "SNL" alumnus Tim Meadows as a deadpan principal, Rajiv Surendra as a math geek-cum-rapper and Lizzy Caplan, whose charmingly vindictive lesbian character rejoices in the name Janis Ian (while the real Ian's suicidal-teen anthem "At Seventeen" plays briefly in the background).

And it's in spite of a plot that not only feels like a pale retread of Heathers, with Lindsay Lohan in the Winona Ryder role, but falls back on that hoary old satire ploy--a stranger in a strange land.

Here, Lohan is the 16-year-old outsider (supposedly a home-schooled expatriate, newly returned from Africa) who seeks to destroy the insidious power of the Plastics (queen bee Rachel McAdams, "Toaster Strudel" heiress Lacey Chabert, dimwit sidekick Amanda Seyfried), the glamorous girl clique reigning in her Evanston, Ill., high school. Complications, of course, ensue when Lindsay falls for Rachel's ex-boyfriend (Jonathan Bennett).

Fey's script hews perilously close to the usual high school formula, and doesn't even approach graduating to the instant-classic class of Amy Heckerling's oeuvre (as if it could beat out Clueless or Fast Times at Ridgemont High, with its totally awesome cast and cracking Cameron Crowe script). But just because it's derivative doesn't mean Mean Girls isn't reasonably entertaining, in a throwaway kind of way.

I see dead acting careers

There's this interesting character actor in Godsend--a painfully unscary schlock horror flick about a grieving couple who, desperate to get their dead 8-year-old son back, agree to have him cloned by a sinister, ethically challenged doctor.

Italian guy, sixtysomething. Plays the bearded, Mephistophelean quack. Name of Roderick De Nearo, Roberto Nero--something like that. Could have quite a promising acting career if only he could find better projects than this godforsaken B-movie.

Maybe put on weight and portray an aging prizefighter. Follow the sterling example of that great, Oscar-nominated star Alec Baldwin and play an old-school Vegas casino boss. Or perhaps the producers of "The Sopranos" need some aging gangster type for a walk-on part. This goombah looks like he has potential.

Which is more than you can say for his co-stars, Greg Tin-Ear (who, as the tortured, biology-teacher father wears a troubled frown throughout) and Rebecca Rumaging-Thermos, a blowsy blond photographer who has to appear either alarmed or teary-eyed--the sort of undemanding scary-movie role every young actress has to endure before establishing an actual career in, say, comic book spinoffs. Meanwhile, youngster Cameron Bright just has to look really creepy most of the time or cute, which amounts to the same thing.

As for the movie, shot on the cheap in Canada (like most mediocre Hollywood product nowadays), and directed by an English theater guy named Nick Hamm (Hamm by name, ham by nature), the less said the better. Apparently the producers thought that the script, by rookie screenwriter Mark Bomback (Bomback by name, bombastic by nature), raised topical issues concerning stem cell research and human cloning.

They were deluded, or trying to delude moviegoers. This potentially rich topic is merely the hook for a second-rate thriller featuring (how convenient) that usual cinema suspect, a crazed, pyromaniac ax murderer. Be warned, viewers: Stay away from darkened theaters where he may be lurking.