About Mean Girls
Mean Girls is another teen comedy movie you would love to watch. Teenage Cady Heron moves to the suburbs of Illinois and joins public school, She gets a quick primer on the cruel, tacit laws of popularity that divide her fellow students into tightly knit cliques.
She unwittingly finds herself in the good graces of an elite group of cool students dubbed “the Plastics,” but Cady soon realizes how her shallow group of new friends earned this nickname.
After a recent re-watch I started to think about other movies like Mean Girls. Here’s a bunch of them I hope you’ll add to your bucket list.
RELATED: The 30 Funniest Mean Girls Quotes
1. Easy A (2010)
Easy A is a comedy in which a high-school student finds herself labelled as promiscuous after some gossip is overheard, a clean cut high school girl sees her life paralleling Hester Prynne’s in “The Scarlet Letter,” which she is currently studying in school until she decides to use the rumor mill to advance her social and financial standing.
Now her classmates are turning against her and the school board is becoming concerned, including her favorite teacher and the distracted guidance counselor. With the support of her hilariously idiosyncratic parents and a little help from a long-time crush, Olive attempts to take on her notorious new identity and crush the rumor mill once and for all.
2. Eighth Grade (2018)
Directed by YouTube star Bo Burnham, Eighth Grade stars Elsie Fisher, Josh Hamilton, Emily Robinson, Jake Ryan and Fred Hechinger. It was released in the year 2018.
Eighth Grade follows quiet, socially anxious Kayla (Elsie Fisher) as she navigates her last couple of weeks of middle school, the end of her thus far disastrous eighth grade year before she begins high school.
3. Clueless (1995)
Written and Directed by Amy Heckerling, Clueless is a teen comedy starring Alicia Silverstone, Stacey Dash, Brittany Murphy, and Paul Rudd. It was released in the year 1995.
Clueless is a modern-day loose interpretation of Jane Austen’s novel Emma. Set in beautiful and sunny Beverly Hills, Clueless follows Alicia Silverstone’s character as she tries to carefully balance daily tasks of being the most popular and beautiful student at high school, making over a new student at school, and playing matchmaker for her teachers. Clueless examines what is and what isn’t important in a teenager’s life.
4. She’s All That (1999)
Directed by Robert Iscove, She’s All That is a teen romantic comedy film starring Freddie Prinze Jr and Rachael Leigh Cook. The movie follows Zack Siler, a high school student who is popular and confident who is suddenly dumped by his girlfriend. As a result, he makes a bet with his friends that he can transform any girl into the school’s next prom queen.
Zack sets his sights on Laney Boggs, a socially awkward and introverted artist who has just been ostracized by her friends. As Zack sets out to transform Laney into the school’s prom queen, he discovers that she is not the person he thought she was, and he starts to fall in love with her. As a light hearted feel good 90s film, it’s now considered a rom-com classic.
Ugh. Now I feel old.
5. Heathers (1989)
The odd and often uncomfortable world of teen peer pressure is no stranger to any of us, and this dark comedy zooms unhesitatingly into this pressure cooker. It dishes up some grotesque stereotypes, and tosses them into a cleverly campy scenario that threatens the lives of the entire student body of Westburg High.
Heathers is a well-acted movie with many memorable lines. It’s become a classic of the teenage macabre genre, and with good reason. Older teens and adults will find that there’s much dark delight to be found in its silly, biting twist on teen life.
6. 10 Things I Hate About You (1999)
Directed by Gil Junger, 10 Things I Hate About You is a modern day reinterpretation of William Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew. Focusing on a high-school kid named Cameron, who wants to date Bianca, who is then told by Bianca that her dad won’t let her date anyone until her older sister has a boyfriend.
This leads Cameron to pay school yard bad boy, Patrick, to date Bianca’s sister, Kat. Which results in Kat falling for him. In which the typical teenager drama ensues, resulting in Kat getting really upset when she learns the truth of Cameron and Patrick’s agreement.
10 Things I Hate About You also has one of the best soundtracks of any of the films on this list. So it’s certainly worth diving back in to this classic!
RELATED: 11 Movies Similar to 10 Things I Hate About You
7. Legally Blonde (2001)
Directed by Robert Luketic, Legally Blonde is a rom-com starring Reese Witherspoon, Luke Wilson, Selma Blair, Matthew Davis, Victor Garber and Jennifer Coolidge. It was released in the year 2001.
Legally Blonde is about sorority girl Elle Woods (played by Witherspoon) who tries to win her ex-boyfriend, Warner Huntington III, back by getting a law degree at Harvard. During which Elle spends a lot of time trying to overcome the ditzy dumb blonde stereotype through some outrageously hilarious situations.
8. The Diary of a Teenage Girl (2015)
The Diary of a Teenage Girl portrays the life of Minnie, a young teen artist living in 1970s San Francisco who enters into an affair with her mother’s boyfriend. Minnie had a poor self-image, when discovers she is attractive and that she loves sex. Her at times drug induced, artistic-imagination often intercedes in her reality. In this story about sexual betrayal and a coming-of-age young girl, discovering herself as a woman.
9. The Virgin Suicides (1993)
The Virgin Suicides offers a glimpse into the murky unknowability of adolescence, and its legacy is tied to the portraits of femininity with which Sofia Coppola has crafted her filmography. The story is about five beautiful, dreamy Lisbon sisters, whose doomed fates indelibly marked the neighborhood boys who to this day continue to obsess over them.
A story of love and repression, fantasy and terror, sex and death, memory and longing. It is at its core a mystery story: a heart-rending investigation into the impenetrable, life-altering secrets of American adolescence.
10. Cruel Intentions (1999)
Directed by Roger Kumble, Cruel Intentions is a dark teen drama loosely based on the 18th-century French novel Les Liaisons Dangereuses and is set in modern-day New York City.
The premise of the movie revolves around two wealthy and decadent step-siblings, Kathryn and Sebastian, who make a wager to see if Sebastian can bed the headmaster’s daughter, Annette, before the start of the school year. Themes like love, power, sex, manipulation and white privilege are explored throughout the movie.
The bizarre thing is half the time you’re cheering Sebastian on so that he wins the wager and gets to have sex with his step-sister which is a weird flex. The 90s was a wild time!
11. The DUFF (2015)
Directed by Ari Sandel, The DUFF is a teen comedy starring Mae Whitman, Robbie Amell, Bella Thorne, Bianca Santos, Skyler Samuels, Romany Malco, Ken Jeong and Allison Janney. It was released in the year 2015.
The DUFF, an acronym standing for Designated Ugly Fat Friend, is about Bianca who is the DUFF that everyone uses to get to the more popular kids in school. The movie concentrates on Bianca’s journey to growing more confident and becoming less of a DUFF, despite the intentions of high school mean girl Madison to do whatever she can to make Bianca’s life a living hell.
12. Freaky Friday (2003)
Directed by Mark Waters, Freaky Friday is a fantasy-comedy movie starring Jamie Lee Curtis, Lindsay Lohan, Mark Harmon, Chad Michael Murray, Harold Gould, Rosalind Chao and Lucille Soong. It was released in the year 2003.
Freaky Friday is about teenager Anna Coleman who lives with her mother, Tess, and after they get into a big fight at a Chinese restaurant they read the messages from their fortune cookies out aloud simultaneously in the restaurant’s bathroom. The next morning they wake up to find they have switched bodies and have to adapt to their new lives in their new bodies.
13. Booksmart (2019)
Booksmart is a sweet coming of age film about two best friends in their last few days of high school. Amy and Molly rule the school inside their heads. They get excellent grades and Molly is convinced they are the only ones who got into really good universities because they spent their time studying and not doing frivolous things like going to parties.
However, on the eve of their high school graduation they realize they should have worked less and played more. Determined to never fall short of their peers, the girls set out on a mission to cram four years of fun into one night.
14. Wild Child (2008)
Directed by Nick Moore, Wild Child is a teen comedy starring Emma Roberts, Natasha Richardson, Shirley Henderson, Alex Pettyfer and Aidan Quinn. It was released in the year 2008.
Wild Child focuses on privileged teen brat, Poppy Moore, who is sent to boarding school in England. Poppy’s own privileged American attitude is eventually seen be a mask she puts up due to the pain of having lost her mother to a plane crash. As the movie goes on Poppy begins to accept her English peers and they begin to accept her.
15. Romy and Michelle’s High School Reunion (1997)
Directed by David Mirkin, Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion is a comedy starring Mira Sorvino, Lisa Kudrow, Janeane Garofalo, Alan Cumming, Julia Campbell, Vincent Ventresca and Camryn Manheim. It was released in the year 1997.
Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion is about two women in their late-20s who live together and haven’t achieved much in their lives. So they create fake careers to try and impress their former classmates at their upcoming 10 year school reunion.
16. Bring It On (2000)
Directed by Peyton Reed, Bring It On is a comedy about cheerleaders starring Kirsten Dunst, Eliza Dushku, Jesse Bradford and Gabrielle Union. It was released in the year 2000.
Bring It On focuses on two high school cheerleading teams who are preparing for the National Championships and who eventually go head-to-head. Not to mention the teenage drama that happens in and around the two teams.
17. Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen (2004)
Directed by Sara Sugarman, Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen stars Lindsay Lohan, Adam Garcia, Glenne Headly, Alison Pill and Carol Kane. It was released in the year 2004.
Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen is about an aspiring actress who moves from New York to New Jersey and the relationships she has with her favourite rock musician, her mother and her best friend.
What did you think of these movies like Mean Girls?
Have you seen any of these films? Did any of them remind you of Mean Girls?
Let us know on social media.
