DVD Quote of the Day: Mean Girls

Okay, okay. So a regular reader is on my ass about getting posts up more frequently, so I'm attempting to keep up to demand. What's up with school wanting you to do all this reading and shit? Anyhoo, I just fell in love with Tina Fey. I saw Mean Girls once before shortly after it came out, and thought it was funny. I was out last night prowling for a DVD fix and picked it up because I hadn't seen it in awhile.

Tina Fey wrote this based on Rosalind Wiseman's book "Queen Bees and Wannabes: Helping Your Daughter Survive Cliques, Gossip, Boyfriends, and Other Realities of Adolescence", which is cool considering it's a parental self help guide book with no narrative story. I said I fell in love with Tina Fey because this is one smart, well-written comedy. Directed by Mark Waters, who also directed Freaky Friday and Just Like Heaven. Someone once pointed out that the sign of great casting is when you can't imagine anyone else in the roles. Starring Lindsay Lohan, Rachel McAdams, Lacey Chabert, Amanda Seyfried, Lizzie Caplan, Daniel Franzese, Jonathan Bennett, Tina Fey, Tim Meadows, Amy Poehler and Ana Gasteyer. I'm not very big on Lohan because her personal life often eclipses her professional life, but she has a very likable screen presence and is perfect as Cady. I love that they cast some of the funny, talented SNL people that need to get work more often (Meadows, Poehler, Gasteyer).


Cady (Lohan) just moved from Africa and is attending public school for the first time. Janis (Caplan) and Damien (Franzese), the artsy outcasts, take Cady under their wing to guide her through high school social politics. When the highest clique in the school's social hierarchy, "the Plastics" (McAdams, Chabert and Seyfried) offer to take her in, Janis sees this as an opportunity to get revenge on the Plastics queen bee, Regina George (McAdams), for being horrible to her in the past. Cady reluctantly goes along with her plan to infiltrate the Plastics. The situation is further complicated when Cady gets a crush on Regina's ex boyfriend, Aaron Samuels (Bennett). Cady learns about the intricacies of "girl world". Such as when girls fight, it has to be sneaky, never date a friend's ex boyfriend, and when it's Halloween, wear the sluttiest outfit you can find, and add animal ears. Cady also learns about the "burn book", a book where the girls put pictures of everybody in school, and then write nasty things about them. There is plenty of conflict, and the tension and backstabbing between the girls gets worse and worse.


I would have liked to have seen more of the subplot of the newly divorced Ms. Norbury (Fey), the calculus teacher, and Mr. Duvall (Meadow), the principal, with their budding romance. I was iffy about this movie at first because it seemed like Heathers meets Clueless, and frankly, they're both so good they really don't need to be redone. This is different, though. I love the little jungle-themed vignettes (hard to describe), when Cady makes comparisons between high school and the way animals act with each other. The special features on the DVD are awesome with feature commentary by director Waters, producer Lorne Michaels and writer Tina Fey, bloopers, deleted scenes, and some behind the scenes stuff. In the special features, Rachel McAdams says something interesting. She says that Chris Rock once pointed out that women would run the world....if we didn't hate each other so much. So true! We can be horrible to each other. Ms. Norbury (Fey) says to the girls during the aftermath, that they have to stop calling each other sluts and whores, because when they do it, it makes it okay for guys to do it ("It's just bad for business"). There is so much humour in this film and I usually go with one of the funniest lines, but I'm going with one of the most profound. Here it is, from Cady's voice over narration on what she's learned about Girl World.....

Cady: Calling somebody else fat won't make you any skinnier. Calling someone stupid doesn't make you any smarter. And ruining Regina George's life definitely didn't make me any happier. All you can do in life is try to solve the problem in front of you.

More ramblings to come.....

DVD Quote of the Day: Fresh Prince of Bel-Air

I got a few weeks off between semesters, so like any good student I did absolutely nothing. Nothing at all, except buy some new DVDs. After watching The Pursuit of Happyness in the theaters, it reminded me of how much I used to enjoy The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. So I got seasons 1, 2, and 3 and zipped through all of them already (maybe even twice). Unless you live under a rock, you probably know the premise. Will Smith stars as Will, a young man from Philly sent to live with his aunt, uncle and cousins in Bel-Air to keep him out of trouble. A great ensemble cast with James Avery as stern, father-figure Uncle Phil, Janet Hubert-Whitten as fiery, mother figure Aunt Vivien (seasons 1-3), Alfonso Ribeiro as uptight, young Republican Carlton, Karyn Parsons as ditzy, superficial Hilary, Tatyana Ali as young Ashley and Joseph Marcell as Geoffrey, the sarcastic, British, family butler. A "fish out of water" story about Will shaking up the Banks' household.

While watching seasons 1-3, I realized how many cool guest appearances were made on this show....Richard Roundtree (John Shaft), Don Cheadle, Heavy D, Quincy Jones, Malcolm-Jamal Warner (Theo on the Cosby Show), Naomi Campbell, Vivica A. Fox, Jasmine Guy, Queen Latifah, Tisha Campbell, Lela Rochon, Nia Long, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Diedrich Bader (Oswald on the Drew Carey Show), the FINE Allen Payne, Milton Berle, Raven, Garcelle Beauvais, Larenz Tate, Lark Voorhies (Lisa on Saved by the Bell), Sherman Hemsley, Oprah Winfrey, Vanessa Williams, Kim Fields (Tootie!), Tom Jones, D.L. Hughley, Bell Biv Devoe and recurring appearances by Jeffrey A. Townes as Jazz and the divalicious Jenifer Lewis as Aunt Helen. Some guest appearances wouldn't be as impressive if you were too young to remember some of these people. I had to explain some of them to my son when he asked, "Why are they clapping for that guy?" (You see, there was this show that was really popular a long time ago called "The Cosby Show"....etc)


Hilarious stuff. Unfortunately, Janet Hubert-Whitten was replaced mid-series by Daphne Maxwell-Reid as Aunt Viv. It's not completely clear as to why (some say she didn't get along so well with Will Smith, others say she demanded too high a salary, others say the producers fired her for getting pregnant), but I felt the Aunt Vivien character wasn't the same after that. Not only did Maxwell-Reid look nothing like Hubert-Whitten, but Aunt Viv lost her fiery personality. In any case, I enjoyed the first three seasons during the break. The season 1 DVD box set has 4 discs with 24 episodes, and a short, retrospective documentary with the creators and cast. The season 2 box set has 4 discs with 24 episodes and two special features (The Best Bits of Bel-Air and Bel-Air Bloopers). Season 3 has 4 discs with 24 episodes and two special features made up of highlights and bloopers. Here it is....during the episode where Uncle Phil, Carlton and Will go camping, get lost and run out of gas....

Uncle Phil:...We'll just thumb a ride to the nearest gas station. We used to do it a lot in the 60's.
Will: Whoa, whoa, whoa. Uncle Phil, could you please take a stroll into the 90's, please? We are three black men on the side of a mountain road. The only people that's gonna stop is gonna have on sheets and saying stuff like, "Get 'em, Jim-Bob!"

More ramblings to come....