Mean Girls is a witty school comedy with screenplay by Tina Fey who also plays the ditzy-but-nice teacher in the school. It’s based on a serious anthropological study of teenagers - Queen Bees and Wannabes – by Rosalind Wiseman.

Mean Girls

IMDB summaries it:

Not very promising you might think but actually it’s a lot better than it sounds – and certainly the best of the three reviewed here on this page. The twist is the heroine has been home-schooled in the jungles of Africa by her zoologist parents – you’ve seen this kind of thing before in 3^rd Rock from the Sun and California Man. And the jungle premise does provide an angle for some good visual jokes for this we're-seeing-things-in-a-new-light-comedy. It's reminiscent of the famous anthropological study of the primitive tribe called the Nacirema from the 1970s. This tribe had many strange habits. They were not very sociable and hide themselves away in their abodes each evening and spend many hours worshipping a strange religious artefact that usually was placed in the corner of the room. Whole families were so religious that they could not leave it for more than a few minutes and would even eat their evening meal in front of this tabernacle-like object. Reverse Nacirema and you will see what I mean - and indeed it could equally well apply to the Hsiri tribe whose strange habits are more familiar to us. Anyway a thumbs up for Mean Girls.

13 Going on 30

13 going on 30

covers somewhat similar territory but doesn’t quite make the grade. Okay, with these role-switching movies you know you have to suspend disbelief and when the 'wishing dust' hits our 13-year old heroine and she gets her wish to be 30 you do have to suspend it a bit more than you should perhaps. But it doesn’t quite carry you along in the same way as the little old Chinese shop in Gremlins or the back of the wardrobe in Narnia or Dorothy on her way to Oz from Kansas in a Little House that Left the Prairie. The transformation from 13-year old to 30 is remarkable mainly for the physical similarity between the two actors with the 17-year age difference between them. Jennifer Garner, the 30-year old version of Jenna Rink the central character is a Julia Roberts lookalike, although not as quite as pretty. She too discovers that at 30 she has become a Mean Girl but can’t remember how she got to be so nasty. Of course she brings 13-year old ideas to her job as top fashion magazine editor - much as you would expect Big Tom Hanks to be able to do if he were suddenly to add a few decades overnight. The best thing in the film is probably Mark Ruffalo, who apparently also recently appeared in 'Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind' which I enjoyed but can’t remember that much about: it’s just that kind of forgettable film (you have to see it to understand what I mean). Ruffalo plays her next door neighbour who was a fat kid at 13 but lean and handsome at 30 – so even though he is engaged to someone else you can imagine what happens.

The Stepford Wives

The Stepford Wives with Nicole Kidman as the lead has a host of other high profile names - Matthew Broderick, Bette Midler, Glenn Close, Christopher Walken, Jon Lovitz (and also an impostor guy rejoicing in the name of Matt Malloy who couldn’t play a flute or pull a pint if you paid him). The Stepford Wives is based on the the 1975 sci-fi offering which was the Pleasantville of its day – or even John Wyndham’s Midwich Cuckoos from the 1960s. A neat twist updates the tale to the 21^st Century and it even includes a gay couple in the mythical Stepford. The DVD version, however, has a few deleted extras which betray a certain lack of conviction regarding the final direction of the storyline – including some expensive-looking but in the end deleted – cgi effects. Undoubtedly script doctors were called in to sort it out. They almost but not quite succeeded in fixing it. Anyway bear in mind that it’s a sci-fi and if you don’t like sci-fi you probably won’t like this. But it has some well-targeted comments on the battle between the sexes as it is now in the noughties as opposed to what it was originally in the 1970s. Plus ca change and all that. They have a nice little go too at reality TV shows. Nicole Kidman starts off as another Mean Girl - very nasty indeed - who is involved in reality TV show productions - until of course she gets fired after one of her tropical island show victims shoots his ex wife and her five lovers. The saddest thing about it is that Matthew Broderick who plays Nicole's husband is no longer the precocious schoolboy he was as Ferris Bueller taking a day off school. We are all getting older by the day - unless you are one who lives in Stepford of course.