Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic Not every movie — indeed, almost no movie — was meant to be turned into a musical. But the trend of doing so has become more common over the last two decades, and when you see a movie-to-musical transformation that really works, a surprising alchemy occurs.
It can feel as if that story was always made to be told through song and dance; when you think back on the non-musical version, it can now seem like it’s missing something.
That’s the sensation I’ve had at movies-turned-Broadway-musicals like “Hairspray,” “School of Rock” (built around Andrew Lloyd Webber’s greatest score in decades), and even “Back to the Future” (a musical I was recently dragged to kicking and screaming, and I wound up loving it).
The same dynamic works, in a clever if less spectacular way, in “Mean Girls,” the movie adaptation of the 2018 Broadway musical version of the classic 2004 screen comedy.
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