Although this got nice notices when it was out in the theaters, I still wasn't sure I wanted to see it. Produced by Saturday Night Live's Lorne Michaels, and written and starring several SNL alumni, it had a stigma of stupidity. Yet the reviews said it was smart, funny, and well-done.

The reviews were right. For the most part, this is an intelligent movie. The premise is that a home-schooled girl fresh off the plane with her African-studying professor parents would finds the rituals of high school alien. Every so often she sees that world in light of her African knowledge. Graft on the typical story of revenge against the Heathers-like girls who run the schoool, the Plastics, and you've got something that is a fresh enough variant on cliques in school that it's interesting.

Surprisingly for an SNL-related script (thankfully, however, not a direct inspiration from any SNL skit, though), the writer, Tina Fey, keeps most of the elements from going over-the-top (maybe it was because her script was based on a book?). If anything, I was surprised that the movie didn't use the kids-as-animals comparisons more, but more might have been strained in this case, and it was probably the right move to be restrained. There's also a wonderful bit with a school bus that gets played on early and then returns for the climax that seems in the end to have been a surprise until you realize they clued you in about it in the first minutes. All of the characters, while based on stereotypes, come across as more real than one usually gets in these teen movies; even the mean girls of the title are understandable.

The most annoying thing in the movie was fellow-SNL alumnus Amy Poehler as the alpha-mean girl's very liberal-minded mother. In a couple of gags that the Farrelly brothers would have been proud of, she lowers the entire tone of the movie. Luckily, her part is minimal. (The other SNL cast member, Tim Meadows, however, does a great turn as the school principal.)

I'd rank this one with other teen high school flicks such as Fast Times at Ridgmont High, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, The Breakfast Club, and Heathers. Worth a rental.