from the moment I mean girls First hitting theaters in 2004, middle and high schoolers everywhere were hooked. Quotes like “On Wednesdays, we wear pink” and “Gretchen, stop trying to make out.” get happen!” bounced around the school hallways. On October 3rd, someone might turn from their desk to deadpan, “It’s October 3rd,” and on Halloween, at least one girl would inevitably say “I’m a rat—duh!” “Limited. High school calculus classes became ground zero for “doesn’t exist!”. Jokes, and of course, “Boo, you whore!” became the go-to insult.
The grown-up world may have been insulated enough to avoid such cultural saturation, but the girl world was obsessed, partly because so few teen comedies catered specifically to that audience; Movies like Ignorance, Legally blondeAnd let come John Hughes movies and American Pies With its A-list pedigree, crisp writing and keen eye for cultural trends, I mean girls Once again recognizing the power that women and girls hold in the mass market, they were bound to go gangbusters. (Hi, Barbie!) But no matter how many times we try to recapture the magic, it’s also time to accept a sad truth: We’ll probably never get a teen comedy this big again.
Back in 2004, I mean girls That was all. Lindsay Lohan, who starred as Cady Heron, was at the height of her fame, and Regina George herself, Rachel McAdams, locked down two blockbusters in the same year—I mean girls And From the notes. Lohan and McAdams, along with Amanda Seyfried and Lacey Chabert, understand the assignment perfectly, and deliver their lines with deliciously sharp conviction, and supporting players like Rajeev Surendra (who plays Kevin G) also get their time to shine. Meanwhile, writer Tina Fey (who also starred as Ms. Norbury) had seven years Saturday Night Live tenure and four of those have been spent behind the “Weekend Update” desk. If that wasn’t enough to get the parents on board, Faye’s partner SNL Amy Poehler, Ana Gasteyer and Tim Meadows also starred.
More important than any cast member, though, was the writing—an hour and 37-minute marathon of absurd, endlessly quotable jokes that seemed designed specifically for early-Internet meme-ability, before it was even a thing. The production of the film was also important. From Regina George’s multicolored Takashi Murakami x Louis Vuitton purse to the perfectly mixed soundtrack—which juxtaposes new hits like Kelis’ “Milkshake” with classics from artists like Blondie—I mean girls His French manicured finger was on a very precise pulse, deepening its resonance.
then I mean girlsLikes a couple of teen comedies Superbad And Juno (both released in 2007) managed to recapture the zeitgeist. Look much later than that, though, and you’ll struggle to find a teen comedy that ever hits that hard again.
Why do you like movies? The Duff, Age of Seventeen, BookSmart, And take revenge Never seem to break the same way? One could argue that they’re not that strong (some of them certainly aren’t) but something deeper seems to be at play: the trends in how we create, consume and talk about media have shifted. is what makes a teenager. Like a comedy I mean girls Almost impossible to copy.
Movies like superheroes iron man Perhaps predicting the decline of original filmmaking for adults, but that same year, Teen Cinema saw its first equivalent. Twilight Movie tea Harry Potter The series already reported that the power of franchises was to capture youngsters and their parents at the box office, And Twilight It further supported the trend. when Harry Potter Divide its final installment into two parts, Twilight imitated—and then, so did his heir, The Hunger GamesWhich premiered in 2012.
As studios began to focus their attention (and budget) around the main tentpoles, other forces began to take shape online. MySpace started in 2003, and a year later, in the same year I mean girls Premiered, Facebook arrived—a social network for college students that opened its doors to the public two years later. Teenagers were already spending more and more time online on sites like Xanga and LiveJournal, but Myspace and especially Facebook took things to a new level, as did Twitter a few years later. The more time we’ve all spent on social media, the more pop culture—once a monoculture—has fragmented into increasingly atomized interests.
These days, TikTok, Spotify and algorithms have more influence on most people’s music choices than Top 20 countdowns and radio DJs. In a world of social media influencers, niche media and micro-celebrities, it’s increasingly rare to see a Taylor Swift or Beyoncé tour achieve the cultural ubiquity that it doesn’t. And so, like movies Barbie And Oppenheimer Our tech overlords look like little miracles in the year 2024.
When it comes to teen comedies, part of the problem may be that there aren’t many great ones. (A teen comedy that really is good After all, they were few and far between even before the Internet age.) And yet, even the rare entries that resonate like flashes in a crowded pan. For example, look at the flawless style of 2022 take revengeStarring dear Riverdale Breakout Camila Mendes and Gen-Z cool girl Maya Hawke. Critics loved the candy color Strangers on the train riff, and by its second week on Netflix, so did viewers. But when was the last time you heard someone quote it? Is anyone still talking about this movie? We have more content these days than ever before, but it’s increasingly impossible to remember much of it more than a week after streaming.
One way or another, a gem or two will (hopefully) always manage to break the content overload. But year after year, it’s looking more and more like that I mean girls Teen-comedy may be one of our last, rosy gasps of cultural dominance.
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