Back in 2000, Lindsay Lohan had already celebrated her feature-length debut in Nancy Meyers’ 1998 movie, The Parent Trap, and was a household name. But by the turn of the decade, she needed another hit to step back into the spotlight which soon came with 2003’s Freaky Friday and Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen. Shortly following the latter, her spring from star to superstar would come with the infamous title, Mean Girls, which just arrived for streaming on Hulu.
Whether it’s your first time (how?) or your millionth time, tuning into Hulu to watch Mean Girls while you can is something we couldn’t support more.
Along with Lindsay Lohan’s leading performance, which would cement her as a top-tier actress in her age group, the movie also helped usher along the budding careers of other talented performers including Lizzy Caplan (Party Down), Rachel McAdams (The Notebook), and Amanda Seyfried (Jennifer’s Body).
In Mean Girls, Lindsay Lohan stars as Cady Heron, a teenager whose world is turned upside down after her family relocates from Africa to the United States. Cady has been homeschooled her entire life which makes the move especially difficult as she’s thrown into the social tiers and traumas of American high school.
Along the way, she makes two friends, Janis Ian (Lizzy Caplan) and Damian Leigh (Daniel Franzese) who enlist Cady in their quest for vengeance against the school’s leading clique of girls known as the Plastics.
Aside from Lindsay Lohan and the rest of its leading stars, Mean Girls also features some incredibly famous names in the comedy world who play the movie’s older generation.
A handful of Saturday Night Live alumni, including Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Tim Meadows, and Ana Gasteyer take on the roles of adults along with Scrubs and The Middle’s Neil Flynn.
Not only does she star as one of the high school teachers, but Tiny Fey also penned the script for the laugh-out-loud comedy, with her old pal and Saturday Night Live creator, Lorne Michaels, joining as a producer.
Mark Waters hopped on board to helm the project, which would serve as the second time he paired up with Lindsay Lohan following their work together just a few years earlier on Freaky Friday.
It Still Holds Up
Mean Girls was one of the biggest titles of the year, amassing $130.1 million at the global box office against its $18 million production budget. While Paramount Pictures likely knew that it had a hit on its hands, nothing could’ve prepared them for the mania caused by Lindsay Lohan, Lizzy Caplan, and the rest of the cast.
Continuing to hold up after a full two decades, the movie sits on Rotten Tomatoes with 84 percent.
In 2011, a sequel aptly titled Mean Girls 2 arrived on ABC Family with Tim Meadows reprising his role as the school’s principal. But, without Lindsay Lohan and the other members of the original film’s cast, the movie didn’t perform to expectations.