Plastic fantastic

Cady Herron returns from being home-schooled in Africa to high school in Illinois. She unwittingly walks into a war zone when she is befriended by both the arty goth Janis and her camp friend Damian and the ruling clique, the Plastics. She is torn between helping Janis to unseat Regina, Queen of the Plastics and becoming one of the most popular girls in school. She soon learns that social skills are the one thing that can’t be learnt.

Though the world the film is set in is a heightened reality it is still recognisable as our world. For once the school portrayed isn’t rammed to the gills solely with photogenic types; there are plenty of normal and weird-looking kids too. The characters may be stereotypical in places, but they fit the criteria of the various cliques that emerge in any school. Top of the heap is a small group of girls who seem to have it all – looks, money and good-looking boyfriends. But the only way they can keep their place is by denigrating everyone around them for being too anything, whether it’s too fat, too thin, too ugly, too short or tall, too clever, too stupid, too gay, or too unfashionable. They are feared and revered in equal measure and hold ultimate sway. Every school has them, everyone hates them but wants to be them or with them and that’s the secret of their fascination. They are horrible people but we can’t help ourselves, we want to know what they’re doing all the time. And that’s what makes this film so watchable. We really want them to get their come-uppance but understand the urge to join them, no matter what the cost is. Add to that a convincing cast and a script full of cultural references, cusses and sideswipes at the characters and you have thoroughly enjoyable piece of brain candy for anyone at secondary school or anyone who’s ever been.

Lindsay Lohan is carving out quite a career for herself at the moment. Following her perky turn in “Freaky Friday” she makes a pretty, likeable lead. She plays Cady as an intelligent, level-headed girl utterly confounded by a social system that is based on whim rather than reason. But she is still desperate to be liked and accepted and this is what turns her head. Her transformation from gauche new girl to queen of mean is a believable one because it is incremental. Though she may start hanging around with the head bitches so she can plot their downfall with her social outcast friends, it easy to understand how she could be sucked into their way of life. Her language and clothes reflect her transformation. She starts out speaking standard American English, which is soon peppered with meaningless teen-speak, (calling everyone “bee-yatch” and sticking “shut up!” in the middle of sentences. She also switches from wearing jeans and shirts to barely there mini skirts and make-up by the trowel-full. Her character’s narration illustrates how her viewpoint changes. When we first see her in social situations, she comments on them in voice-over as David Attenborough might, and we see them acting as African animals. By the near-end of the film she is reduced to commenting on how people fit the Plastics’ physical ideal. As she’s the lead and is essentially a nice person, she is allowed to redeem herself by the end and never loses the audience’s sympathy.

We don’t see as much of the social outcasts in the film as I would have liked. Janis is played with plenty of spark by Lizzy Caplan, who stomps about looking as though she has a massive chip on her shoulder at all times. She is the picture of sneering teenage angst in its rawest form. She’s also the mistress of revenge, coming up with the areas of Regina’s life that need to be tackled to destroy her and always has a handy put-down at the ready. Daniel Franzese revels in his role as Damian who’s “almost too gay to function”. He makes the most of camping it up, scaring a short, chunky girl who’s trying to get him out of the girls’ toilets by shouting “Danny DeVito! I love your work!” and running towards her. His refusal to see himself as male is the lynchpin of his character, hiding at the back of an all-girl assembly and singing falsetto at the school Christmas show. He’s a bitchy, cuddly camp stereotype, but he’s a likeable bitchy, cuddly camp stereotype.