Mean Girls seems an odd kettle of fish. It adapts to the screen the 2017 Broadway musical of the same name, which in turn adapted the original 2004 feature film. Remakes are nothing new in Hollywood, of course, but it is rare to see a film quite so recent get recycled. We are in an age of streaming entertainment, and that has followed a golden age of physical media, so for all intents and purposes the original Mean Girls has never gone away. That leaves this new version either as an alternate version or as competition – being a replacement was never really on the table.

The story remains the same: home-schooled teenager Cady Harron (Angourie Rice) moves from Kenya to the USA and enrols in her first high school. With newfound friends Janis (Auli’i Cravalho) and Damian (Jaquel Spivey), she joins in a plan to enter the elite student clique known as “the Plastics”, led by school queen bee Regina George (Reneé Rapp). Beyond the songs, not that much has changed. Certainly the new film is less overtly white and more openly queer, but plot point to plot point it is all very familiar. It even brings back Tim Meadows and Tiny Fey in their 2004 roles, with Fey also continuing to act as screenwriter. Samantha Jayne and Arturo Perez Jr. serve as directors.

What about the songs? For one thing, a lot of musical numbers have been shed in converting a 150-minute stage play to a 112-minute movie. Of the songs that are left, few make any particular impact. Most simply wash over the audience like semi-bland pop. If there is a highlight it is “I’d Rather Be Me”, which manages both a catchy melody and a summing-up of the film’s central themes. Weirdly, for such a central song, it doesn’t feature the lead but supporting character Janis instead. Auli’i Cravalho does an outstanding job with it; and why wouldn’t she? She’s the voice of Disney’s Moana, and hands-down the most entertaining performer among the whole ensemble.

Not that rest of the cast are slouches, mind. Jaquel Spivey and Reneé Rapp are both excellent, while Avantika Vandanapu and Bebe Wood succeed in the thankless task of following up original co-stars Amanda Seyfried and Lacey Chabert as Regina’s amusingly vapid sidekicks. Really it is only Angourie Rice that underwhelms in the lead role of Cady. To an extent it is a limited role, but Rice simply fails to find the energy and charm that Lindsay Lohan did the first time around.

There is an effort made to update the story to incorporate social media and smartphones, but to be honest it seems a little tokenistic. There also seems to be an emphasis on finding new jokes, as opposed to simply recycling every gag and one-liner from 2004. All the same, there never really seems to be a pressing reason to support remaking Mean Girls at all. As a musical it underwhelms. As a comedy film it simply kept reminding me of the older and better version. Mean Girls the musical is a lot of fun, and a wide audience is really going to enjoy it. It also lacks its own cultural footprint. People still watch and reference the original film today. In 20 years it seems likely most people won’t remember that the remake even exists.