If you lower your expectations, you'll love Mean Girls.

It's just like the original - only with less punch.

About a third of the way into the new Mean Girls, I realised I was watching the same movie I’d watched earlier in the day — only with less punch.

The 2024 version of Mean Girls is based on the Broadway musical that is based on the 2004 film of the same name — a Mean Girls inception, if you will. In this new version, Australia’s Angourie Rice stars as the sweet yet naive Cady Heron, The Secret Life of College Girls’ Renee Rapp gives Regina George a Gen Z update, and The Summer I Turned Pretty’s Christopher Briney is our floppy haired love interest Aaron Samuels. Tina Fey and Tim Meadows reprise their roles as Ms. Norbury and Mr. Duvall. And in a move that is sure to make millennials feel old, Busy Philipps takes on the role of Regina George’s mum AKA ‘the cool mom’.

In the opening scene, Cady’s single mum (played by The Office’s Jenna Fischer) announces that she’s taken a job at an American university, so they’ll be moving back to the US from Kenya and Cady will be attending a normal h…