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Avantika’s knockout comic timing lifts a lacklustre fusion of the 2004 high school comedy starring Lindsay Lohan and the 2018 Broadway show

This scattershot movie musical remake of a Broadway show based on Mark Waters’s 2004 comedy of high school hierarchies is not overly endowed with new ideas. In fact the feature directing debut of Samantha Jayne and Arturo Perez Jr adheres so closely to the story beats of the original movie – homeschooled Cady (Angourie Rice) relocates to an American school from Kenya, and finds herself adopted by the school’s in-crowd, the “Plastics” – that you rather wonder what the point of it is.

Fortunately, a couple of shambolic dance sequences notwithstanding (the Apex Predator number is a sloppy low point), Mean Girls has a couple of notable assets. Renée Rapp, reprising her Broadway role as queen bee Regina George, slinks through the film with a carnivorous glint in her eye. But the scene-stealing standout is Avantika, playing sweet-natured Plastic dimwit Karen. Her comic timing is impeccable; her musical number, a boisterous Halloween party romp titled Sexy, is worth the price of admission alone.

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