Boy Movies #58

Literally finding the connection between Mean Girls and The Beekeeper

Hello and welcome to Boy Movies, a newsletter by me, Allison Picurro. This week’s issue is a day late because, to be honest, I was really sleepy yesterday. Sorry, it will definitely happen again!

STICKERS

This is my weekly reminder that Boy Movies stickers are still available for you to buy and own. I stuck one in a bathroom stall at Brooklyn, New York’s esteemed bar/comedy venue Union Hall a couple of weekends ago — this could be you too, if you purchase yourself a sheet. And if you want to stop hearing about these goddamn stickers, well, all the more reason to pick some up.

The art of the January movie

January is a historically lawless time for film releases. It’s a lawless time to exist, honestly. (It’s like an entire month of “being aLIVE, AHAHAHAHA!”) Last year, I wrote about Plane, which is a movie that I’m now about 365 days removed from and barely remember a second of. That’s exactly what a January release should be: a movie that whispers gibberish to the most useless areas of your brain while you’re watching, enough to ensure that you never think about it again. It is the ideal scenario. Unfortunately I did not get that experience this year, because Mean Girls pissed me off.

To list all the issues with Mean Girls — 2024’s Mean Girls: The Musical: The Movie, to be clear — would keep us here all day. I’ve mostly calmed down from my initial fury, which began around minute one of the film, when I realized they had cast, respectfully, an actress who cannot sing as the lead in a musical, and only continued mounting for the remainder of its runtime. Look, I am a woman of a certain age, which means that the original Mean Girls, released in 2004 and one of the most girl movies to ever girl movie, is, to me, a formative text. The memeification of it in subsequent years isn’t even enough to make it unfunny; those jokes still hit, that cast is still so packed with such undeniable star power that the movie feels like lightning in a bottle. Somewhere along the way Tina Fey got it in her head that she needed to “fix” what was “problematic” about it, and — just kidding, a studio offered her a bunch of money to capitalize on nostalgia and that’s exactly what she did. Let’s not even get into how visually hideous it is, how humiliatingly it sets its cast up for failure by asking them to repeat lines from a movie they’re all too familiar with to even begin to form an original take on. Let’s not even get into how atrocious the music is. Like I said, we’d be here all day. I actually think the more pressing conversation is that the girls of Mean Girls 2024 aren’t even mean.

Even this photo is completely lifeless!

I’m far from the first person to point this out. The girls are mostly making sarcastic little comments, in between cheap-looking musical numbers (I keep thinking about the one at the Halloween party, in which the ensemble does a dance break in such a tight space that it sort of looks like they shot the sequence in a closet). There was no chance of a movie like the new Mean Girls succeeding when the people doing the marketing wouldn’t even admit it was a musical. The screenplay is almost entirely copy and pasted from the original, with lines tweaked slightly so as not to accidentally be misconstrued as funny. What becomes of Mean Girls without the cutting point of view that made the original an instant classic?

The problem is that this new Mean Girls is afraid of itself as well as its audience. As a result, it spends two hours talking down to the viewer. The changes are all empty, landing with a thud: In Mean Girls 2024, Janis (played by Auli’i Cravalho) is gay, which is about where her characterization ends. The film has no interest in critiquing her, or anyone else. Mean Girls wants all the credit for “updating” the material without actually looking inward to unpack whether it has anything new to say. If the girls aren’t mean, there are no lessons for them to learn. The whole movie is moot, nothing more than an “iconic quote” conveyor belt that technically hits all of its marks, but in the same way a community theater production of West Side Story technically hits all of its marks.

The scene that put me over the edge was the one where Fey, reprising her role as Ms. Norbury, gives her famous post-Burn Book speech about how girls shouldn’t call each other bitches and sluts. These new girls are barely calling each other bitches and sluts, at least not in a way that would ever actually hurt anyone’s feelings or reputation. For what purpose was “fugly slut” turned into “fugly cow”? Why did “I didn’t leave the southside for this” become a tongue-in-cheek “I didn’t leave grad school for this”? Why omit “social suicide” entirely? Even amid all of the tip-toeing, Cady still tricks Regina into gaining weight on her mission to ruin her life. So, alright, which is it? This film wants it both ways: This utterly toothless Mean Girls, so insipid in its execution, stops short of saying anything interesting, as concerned with appealing to fans of the original as it is with trying to bring in new fans who they obviously see as media illiterate. It can’t commit to a perspective because it doesn’t have one. The plague that is women’s hatred of other women hasn’t gone away — it has, perhaps, gotten even worse. Mean Girls is like Frankenstein’s monster, a movie born out of the uncanny valley shadow of its predecessor, too anxious about being subjected to a bad faith reading to take a stance on anything. The film is, dare I say, not fetc— [the feds from The Beekeeper shoot me down]

Which brings me to The Beekeeper

So, yes, the second movie I saw this past weekend was Jason Statham’s The Beekeeper. (That is exactly what Martin Luther King Jr. would’ve wanted for the world.) The Beekeeper is a film that I boldly put on CREATURE WATCH in last week’s issue, and in that regard The Beekeeper did not disappoint. There were certainly a lot of bees buzzing around, at least in the first thirtyish minutes. After that it mostly just descends into scene after scene of the impenetrable wall that is Jason Statham mowing dudes down. Cool! I laughed so much more at The Beekeeper than I did at Mean Girls, which I cannot imagine was the intention of either film.

period

I will say when I put The Beekeeper on creature watch I didn’t really understand what I was declaring. In all honesty, this movie is less about creatures than it is about telemarketing fraud schemes against the elderly. Alright! Such a heinous act turns Jason Statham, the titular beekeeper, into something of a Massachusetts-based John Wick, if John Wick was avenging mommy instead of doggy. (Here, mommy is Phylicia Rashad.) In the name of justice for mommy, the Beekeeper goes up against the tech bros ripping off computer illiterate geriatrics, plus the meddling FBI and the other beekeepers in the secret beekeeper society he used to be part of. (Any questions?) This is all in pursuit of his ultimate target, who sits right at the top of the operation: the first son of the United States (played with Roman Roy-esque pathos by the Lego headed king himself, Josh Hutcherson), a rich little bitch who started the whole call center scam. This is all fine and good, if completely ridiculous in a way that is easily forgivable because it’s January and you’re the one who bought a ticket to The Beekeeper in the first place.

And then The Beekeeper decides to give the president of the United States morals.

Here’s what happens: At the final hour, just before the Beekeeper is about to really go apeshit on the first family, Josh Hutcherson’s mom, President Girlboss (Jemma Redgrave), discovers that her campaign was funded by her son’s illicit activities. She is appalled by this, and informs him that she’ll be going public with the truth of his hustle, her reputation be damned. She spouts off platitudes about taking oaths, about owing her fellow Americans the truth. BORING!

First of all, that is science fiction. Second of all, I am simply begging anyone anywhere to take a stance on anything. The Beekeeper stumbles when it chickens out of making the president morally ambiguous, or even, imagine this, a straight up villain. After coming this far, why not go all in? Why must the president, historically a bad job done by bad people, become a false idol? It’s wild that The Beekeeper and Mean Girls have similar failings: Both are petrified of having a backbone, and both are worse for it. Yes, media literacy is in the gutter, and everyone seems to have forgotten that depiction isn’t the same as endorsement, but how are we ever expected to get back to a place of general intelligence if the people putting out the art are such cowards?

I do in fact realize that I just called The Beekeeper and Mean Girls 2024 art. That’s January for you — it’ll make a person do crazy things.