REVIEW: Mean Girls

Today was my first official paid day at school. We had a 3-hour staff meeting that left me feeling a little stressed and frustrated. I went into my classroom and worked in there for 2 hours, but left feeling like I hadn't accomplished much.

My mom called and said that she was babysitting my nephew for 2 hours. I needed some "baby time." For whatever reason I forget my troubles when I'm with Alexander.

When we dropped him off at my brother's, I came home tired and in need of a good distraction. Enter Netflix's instant viewing. I've known about this, but just started experimenting with it a couple of days ago. Most of the movies and TV shows available for instant viewing are not new releases, but there is some decent stuff.

I had always heard that the movie, Mean Girls, was really good, so I decided to give it a try with the "instant viewing" feature.

It was very good. How good? Good enough that I sat through a full-length Lindsay Lohan movie on my computer screen, fer cryin' out loud. She plays a girl that goes to regular public school for the first time in her life because she grew up in Africa, the child of 2 researchers, who home-schooled her. High school turned out to be a "baptism by fire" experience, but she did make 2 friends who warned her about the clique called the Plastics. When the Plastics invited her to sit with them at lunch, Lohan's character, Cady, started living as a double agent, hanging out with the clique, but feeding information back to her 2 friends, Janice and Damian. The problem is that popularity and the combination of fear and respect that it yields from others can be pretty seductive.

We've all known people like the girls in the Plastics. We've all done a little two-faced talking at one time or another in our lives. For me, I found the watching of this movie to be very timely, especially because my students start school a week from tomorrow.

Dr. Phil calls it "leveling." That's when someone is mean to someone else for the sheer pleasure of it and to make themself feel better. But the honest truth is that it doesn't. And, like the movie says, calling someone fat doesn't make you thinner. Calling someone stupid doesn't make you smarter. I'm going to remember that when the problems start in my classroom, because with 5th graders it is inevitable, and I have to try to appeal to their logic.

What I also liked about the movie was that it had a good message but it was still pretty funny. I laughed out loud at the Danny DeVito line, which you'll have to see in context.

Good movie! Highly recommended.