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From: "Ian J. Ball" <ijball@mac.invalid>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.tv
Subject: Re: What Did You Watch? 2024-03-08 (Friday)
Date: Sat, 9 Mar 2024 09:25:24 -0800
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On 3/9/24 8:38 AM, Dimensional Traveler wrote:

> What Did You Watch?

While I stayed a little later at work than I intended to, I did get home 
mid-afternoon, which was enough time to get through some movies.

All I did yesterday was movies:

Mean Girls (2024) (Pee+) - In (glorious?) 4k - another movie that 
benefited not at all from being 4k (because of the way it was filmed 
(hell, the movie I watched after, which wasn't even 4k, was a better 
looking image!).
    Luckily, I have seen the original (on Showtime?...) in the past few 
months, so it is still pretty fresh in my mind.
    Anyway, you're probably thinking - "What is the point of remaking a 
movie that already hit it out of the park 20 years ago?!" Well, this one 
is the musical version.
    As such, I definitely found it inferior to the original (which Pee+ 
also has in 4k, though I have not checked that out yet...) in about 
every way possible.
    There were a few good bits - John Hamm turns up as Coach Carr 
(Dwayne Hill played him in the original). And I thought Christopher 
Briney was a more appealing Aaron Samuels than Jonathan Bennett was. 
Finally, Angourie Rice is probably a better actress than Lindsay Lohan.
    Cady's mom is played by Jenna Fischer, who looks so old now...
    Bebe Wood and Avantika are fine as the other plastics, Gretchen and 
Karen - not much worse than the originals, but no better.
    The scene where Regina finds out that Cady has been feeding her carb 
bars to make her fat, and screams, is incredibly well lit - Rapp looks 
downright demonic! That's the best-shot scene in the whole film, but it 
belongs in an entirely different (better! horror!) movie.
    Other changes I didn't understand at all - the character of Cady 
Heron's dad is totally eliminated from the proceedings! And they replace 
Amy Poehler with Busy Philipps as Regina's Mom (why?!!).
    They also sneak in a cameo from Lindsay Lohan (who also looks old 
now - and she's not even 40!!) to play the Mathletes Moderator, but I 
thought Bruce Hunter excelled at this bit in the original.
    Tim Meadows and Tina Fey are still in this, but it felt like both 
roles, especially Meadow's, are downgraded in this version, which I also 
find inexplicable, as Meadows (and to a lesser extent Fey) are the best 
things about the original film.
    They also excise some key bits from the original, like Cady 
daydreaming that she attacks Regina, and more crucially the end of the 
original film where we learn that the "reformed" Regina channeled all of 
her rage into lacrosse and became a jock - Why would you drop probably 
the best bit from the original film?!
    On the singing and music end:
    The music was OK - some of the songs were better than average, 
others were unmemorable.
    Of the singers, I thought Auli'i Cravalho was by far the best (well 
backed up by Jaquel Spivey) - I didn't like Cravalho's take on Janis 
nearly as much as Lizzy Caplan's, but Cravalho's (and Spivey) provide 
probably the best musical bits. Reneé Rapp as Regina can really sing... 
well, sort of - she can really belt it out, but I thought Rapp's 
enunciation was poor (very!) so as a result I couldn't make out half of 
what she was singing! Angourie Rice is an OK singer - she's not bad, but 
she's nothing special either.
    This was an OK watch, but I have no desire to rewatch this version 
now, and the original is a much better watch.

Follow Her (Pee+ (w/ Showtime?)) - This film (which hit the festival 
circuit in 2022, but wasn't internet-released until 2023) is ostensibly 
a "thriller".
    I watched it primarily because it co-stars gorgeous Canadian actress 
Eliana Jones (who unfortunately isn't in the film very much), who I am 
disturbed to see has not worked since 2022 (maybe another actress who 
got married, and either temporarily or permanently "retired" from 
acting?... see, also: Cristine Prosperi).
    I did like the way this was filmed - while it wasn't presented in 
4k, it looks like it was probably filmed that way, and looked virtually 
4k watching it.
    Anyway, this stars actress Dani Barker (who I think must also be 
Canadian, as she co-starred in 2014's "The Scarehouse" which was 
definitely a Canadian film). Barker plays a NYC aspiring actress who is 
slumming it as a social media star - her "bit" seems to be "exposing" 
men with fetishes.
    One of her recent bits involved a glitch where the identity of the 
fetishist she was exposing is revealed in her video (their faces are 
supposed to be masked), but she leaves it online as it's her biggest 
video yet, and is about to vault her into the Top 10.
    But destitute, and about to have her apartment taken away by her 
disapproving father (Mark Moses), she takes a job in upstate New York to 
help a man (Luke Cook) develop a screenplay.
    Of course, the dude, while handsome, is a bit of a nut. Oh and he 
may have an ulterior motive!!
    It's not long before things take a disturbing turn.
    This was all right. I'm not sure it sports anything we haven't seen 
before. But I guess it delivers on what it's after.
    I am not sure I cared for the ending, which felt like it came right 
out of "Unfriended (2): Dark Web".


What did you watch?