Last night I saw the move Mean Girls.

Mean Girls is a movie about a 16 year-old girl, Cady, who has been homeschooled her entire life. She moves to Evanston, Illinois (a north suburb of Chicago) from Africa, where her parents have been doing research of some sort. Cady has to learn to adjust to high school and the North Shore. Neither of which would be easy to do alone, but together are extremely difficult. Because she is pretty, she is immediately solicited by The Plastics, a group of girls who look like Barbie dolls, and are simultaneously loathed and admired by the rest of the school, North Shore High. Cady also befriends two artsy people, a gay guy, and a goth-like girl. The artsy friends decided that Cady will pretend to like The Plastics, but actually spy on them, and ruin them. Instead, she really turns into one of The Plastics, blows off the artsy friends, and is hated by the entire school. But in the end she joins Mathletes, wins the state competition, is voted Spring Fling Queen, admits her mistakes, and ends up with The Boy, because it's one of those movies.

Those are the basics of the story. I decided to go see it because I like stupid teen girl movies like that (my favorite movie is kind of Bring It On, and I'm only a little embarrassed to admit it. I like all the tumbling in it, okay?) I also went to see it because it was based on the North Shore of Chicago, which is where I am from. I had heard some people say that it wasn't far off from the truth, and I also wanted to see if they made any fun North Shore references.

And, I have to say that it was hilarious. I was giggling almost the entire time. (Incidentally, I was also giggling during the supposed serious moments, but that's what they get for creating a movie titled Mean Girls.) There were a few North Shore references - one of them being a mention of "Old Orchard Mall", which they show as an indoor shopping mall, but is actually an outdoor mall - insignificant point, but interesting to me nonetheless. They also mentioned Northwestern University a few times, which is in Evanston.

In regards to the characters, they did act very much like all the North Shore spoiled brats. While some parts definitely were exaggerated, others really weren't very much. For example, the head Plastic's mother wore a pink velour sweat suit, had a boob job, and wanted to be "cool" so that all her daughter's friends would like her. The daughter hated it, the other friends really did think she was cool - this is very North Shore. I see way too many 45 year old mothers wearing "trendy" clothes, tight shirts, and styling their hair and makeup teen-girl-perfect, instead of mother-appropriate-perfect.

The end was very contrived (is that the right word?) and fakely perfect. But that's okay. Because it's a stupid teen girl movie. It was funny. It amused me for a while. And I went to the cheap theater ($4.50 for students, instead of the $8.50 the other theater charges for students. Another example of North Shore ridiculousness, though I suppose theaters are that expensive everywhere, right? I don't know), so it was worth it.