Teen Comedy’s: High School Musical and Mean Girls

High School Musical:

On New Year’s Eve, Troy Bolton and Gabriella Montez are at a ski resort during winter break. Troy is known as a popular basketball player and Gabriella is really brainy. They both get picked to sing karaoke together on New Year’s night and afterwards they exchange numbers. After winter break Troy goes back to school in New Mexico, where he is surprised to discover Gabriella is a new student at his school. They become friends quickly and decide to audition for the Winter Musical together as a pair. They both get call-backs, which this had made ‘drama queen’ Sharpay Evans and her brother Ryan. Sharpay and Ryan both get upset due to them always wanting to be in the limelight with no one getting in the way of it. At their school Sharpay and Ryan are the drama queens of the school which come across nasty and uncaring in the film. Troy’s friend Chad also becomes upset that Troy got a call-back for the Musical because he is afraid that Troy will become distracted from the basketball championship coming up. Gabriella’s friend Taylor is willing to do anything to get her on the Decathlon team. Chad and Taylor decide to film Troy saying how Gabriella isn’t important after Char tricks him into saying it. Ultimately Taylor shows the video to Gabriella which then makes her refuse to do the call-backs with Troy. Meanwhile, Sharpay and Ryan manipulate the call-backs to the same day and time as the Championship game.

Mean Girls and High School Musical have most things in common, such as they both have a new girl starting at a new school (Gabriella and Cady), they both have stereotyped groups where they sit at lunch, they have the popular people (Sharpay, then the plastics), nerdy group, and jocks etc... However the storylines aren't the same due to HSM being a musical and mean girls being a teen comedy/drama. However there is always a boy in teen movies that the main girl fall in love with which creates most teen comedy's/dramas being similar.

• Most teenage movies have actors/actresses that are playing an age of 16-18, but in real life the person playing those characters are 20-25+.   

Another movie which has a similar story line to Mean Girls: 'The Social Network' 

An outsider goes to great lengths to make friends, alienating the ones who love him/her most in the process

 

The movie ‘Mean Girls’ doesn’t have a very positive message due to an innocent girl who transformed into a mean, fake person all because of three girls called the plastics. However, some girls who watch this film may not pay attention to the message it is portraying because they know that it is just a movie which isn’t based on real life. But in some teenage girls eyes they may think that changing just to be in a popular friend group may be the only option to gain popularity or even more friends.

This film doesn’t have a realistic view on teen girls since not many girls pretend to be someone they’re not all because wanting to be friends with popular people. These stereotypical representations of teenage girls are most common in American films. There are always popular girls, one gorgeous guy who is a jock or some type of sportsman who gets the popular girls, nerds, and of course they all have to end with a prom. For example another movie with similar stereotypes of teenage girls is the movie “Easy A” which is about a clean-cut high school student relies on the school's rumour mill to advance her social and financial standing to get popular and known. Other groups in society after they view stereotypical movies like mean girls and the easy a would often view teenagers as being snobby, who want gorgeous guys, and to be popular. However in the end of these movies we sometimes see that they made a big mistake which shows the teen viewers that changing for someone or changing who you are just to get popularity is stupid and you should be yourself because that’s when people will like you the most.