Mean Girls/Election

Double bill featuring two satirical comedies. ‘Mean Girls’ (2004) stars Lindsay Lohan as Cady Heron, a pretty 15-year-old who has spent most of her life in the wilds of Africa being home-schooled by her zoologist parents. Her upbringing has taught her a lot about survival in the wilderness and the subtleties of animal behaviour, but nothing she has learned can prepare her for the unspoken social etiquette of a mid-American high school, where jocks, cheerleaders, stoners and cool kids jostle for popularity, and a clique of rich and popular girls known as ‘the Plastics’ rule the school. This group of alpha females, led by ‘professional life-ruiner’ Regina George (Rachel McAdams), is initially contemptuous of Cady but then accepts her as a new member. Cady starts to get close to the ‘mean girls’, initially out of curiosity, but it isn’t long before she’s enjoying the buzz of being one of the most popular girls in the school. However, when she inadvertently crosses the line by going on a date with one of Regina’s ex-boyfriends, the gorgeous Aaron (Jonathan Bennett), the Plastics go on the warpath, and Cady must pay for her initiation into their mean Plastic world. ‘Election’ (1999) is a sly satire of the American political system which stars Reese Witherspoon as Tracy Flick, a Straight-A pupil who is determined to become student president of Carver High School. Her teacher Jim McAllister (Matthew Broderick) feels that democracy would best be served if she faced some opposition, and convinces popular but dumb sporting hero Paul Metzler (Chris Klein) to run against her. However, thanks to this intervention and to Tracy’s boundless ambition, the election soon turns into a high school nightmare.