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Mean Girls

After spending most of her life being home-schooled in Africa by zoologist parents, Cady Heron moves to Illinois and enters the real jungle: public high school. She connects with social outcasts Janice (a Goth toughie) and Damian (a hefty homosexual), and gets a zoo-like tour of the cliques to avoid. Chief among them is a group Janice calls The Plastics. They are gorgeous, wealthy, snooty girls led by a malicious Barbie doll named Regina. Both admired and loathed by the student body, the catty trio quickly takes an interest in Cady, who tries hard to think the best of them.

Regina proves Janice right, however, when Cady’s interest in Aaron—Regina’s ex-boyfriend—inspires covert antagonism of adolescent proportions. Made aware that Regina is feigning friendship while stealthily assaulting her, Cady stays close to The Plastics in order to give Regina a dose of her own medicine (“In girl world, all the fighting had to be sneaky”). The trouble is, the more Cady play-acts like a Plastic, the more she becomes one. She soon learns that one’s character is a work in progress and that casual remarks made in private can have far-reaching consequences.

Mean Girls

POSITIVE ELEMENTS There’s a social conscience at work here, and the film isn’t afraid to moralize. Teens who tune in for the cruel jokes and snarky sexual stuff may turn their noses up at the final “too preachy and sentimental” quarter hour, but it’s nice to see a showy bow of redemption tied on an otherwise mixed bag. After 90 minutes of poking fun at self-important, superficial cliques, the story closes by urging teens to clear the air amongst themselves and practice mutual respect. As one young man points out, “There’s good and bad in everyone.” Cady learns that it’s true, and when she gets voted queen of the spring dance, uses the platform to honor the other nominees. She even breaks the crown in pieces and shares it with them.

Cady sets out to teach Regina a lesson, but learns a valuable one herself: It’s pointless to put someone else down in an attempt to make yourself look or feel superior. She says, “Calling someone fat doesn’t make you any skinnier. Calling someone stupid doesn’t make you any smarter. All you can do in life is try and solve the problem in front of you.” Most everyone gets the point, or at least appreciates Cady’s nobility. She’s realistic enough to know that every incoming class will have its Plastics, but is idealistic enough to believe that positive peer pressure could keep them from seizing control.

Another strong message involves the destructive power of gossip, be it malicious or merely careless. (The Bible addresses this issue in 2 Cor. 12:20, James 3:8 and Prov. 11:13, 16:28, 26:20.) Cady pays a heavy price for making a casual remark about a teacher that takes on a life of its own and causes pain. Until she owns up to it and apologizes, Cady is miserable. She takes a big risk coming clean, but decides doing the right thing is worth any fallout (“I had to suck all the poison out of my life”). The fresh start is liberating. She concludes that gossip is a dead end (“I’m trying this new thing where I don’t talk about people behind their backs”).

While undercover among The Plastics, Cady begins to lose track of who she is and the role she’s playing. This illustrates an important truth: No matter what we truly believe in our hearts, we are capable of behaving our way into a change of character. It’s easy to develop bad habits and rationalize, “That’s not who I really am.” But in Cady’s case, fighting nastiness with nastiness draws her dangerously close to becoming what she despises.

The principal tells an assembly of girls, “What the young ladies in this class need is an attitude makeover.” Indeed they do. It’s refreshing to see educators bucking the values-neutral trend and sequestering students in order to cure a moral virus. Ms. Norbury addresses the issue head-on, making the students realize that they’ve all been victims and perpetrators of gossip, and need to apologize to each other (an exercise followed by a series of “trust falls”). Ms. Norbury tells girls to stop referring to each other as “b‑‑ches,” “sluts” and “skanks” because boys hear that and feel entitled to be equally disrespectful. She also encourages Cady to be herself and achieve her academic potential (“You don’t have to dumb yourself down to have a boyfriend”).

There’s also a great statement about “lovingly tough” versus “permissive” parenting. Regina’s needy mother sees herself as progressive and open-minded. She boasts, “There are no rules in this house. I’m not like a regular mom. I’m a cool mom.” But the filmmakers don’t view her as cool at all. She’s a foil. Clinging to fading youth herself, she’s scared of alienating her daughter and lacks the confidence to establish firm boundaries. Consequently, Regina is shrewish, selfish and out of control. This example of lousy child-rearing makes Cady’s firm, involved parents look smarter and more caring, so that when they ground Cady, it’s clearly an act of love. This contrast—humorous, yet poignant—reminds teens not to resent their parents for making rules and enforcing them.

Elsewhere, the hunky Aaron decides that an innocent photo of 5-year-old Cady riding an elephant is more attractive than one of her striking an in-your-face pose with The Plastics. It’s a subtle moment, but a powerful one that says decent guys look at the heart. And while Cady may have lived a sheltered life as a home-schooler abroad, she seems better off for it. She’s better educated than—and lacks the cynicism of—most of her peers. There’s a sweet awkwardness about Cady early in the film that attracts Aaron to he

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Behold! Batman is risen

"The Dark Knight Rises" leaves the fanciful early days of the superhero genre far behind, and moves into a doom-shrouded, apocalyptic future that seems uncomfortably close to today's headlines. As urban terrorism and class warfare envelop Gotham and its infrastructure is ripped apart, Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) emerges reluctantly from years of seclusion in Wayne Manor and faces a soulless villain as powerful as he is. The film begins slowly with a murky plot and too many new characters, but builds to a sensational climax.

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The result, in Christopher Nolan's conclusion to his Batman trilogy, is an ambitious superhero movie with two surprises: It isn't very much fun, and it doesn't have very much Batman. I'm thinking of the over-the-top action sequences of the earlier films that had a subcurrent of humor, and the exhilarating performance of Heath Ledger as the Joker. This movie is all serious drama, with a villain named Bane whose Hannibal Lecterish face-muzzle robs him of personality. And although we see a good deal of Bruce Wayne, his alter-ego Batman makes only a few brief appearances before the all-out climax.

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Bane, played by Tom Hardy in a performance evoking a homicidal pro wrestler, is a mystery because it's hard to say what motivates him. He releases thousands of Gotham's criminals in a scenario resembling the storming of the Bastille. As they face off against most of the city police force in street warfare, Bane's goal seems to be the overthrow of the ruling classes. But this would prove little if his other plan (the nuclear annihilation of the city) succeeds.

Bane stages two other sensational set pieces, involving destroying the Stock Exchange and blowing up a football stadium, that seemed aimed at our society's twin gods of money and pro sports. No attempt is made to account for Bane's funding and resources, and when it finally comes down to Bane and Batman going mano-a-mano during a street fight, it involves an anticlimactic fist-fight. He blows up the city's bridges and to top that lands a right hook on Batman's jaw?

Bane is the least charismatic of the Batman villains, but comes close to matching Bruce Wayne and Batman in screen time. The film also supplies a heroic young cop (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), two potential romantic partners for Wayne, and lots of screen time for series regulars Alfred the Butler (Michael Caine, remarkably effective in several trenchant scenes), Commissioner Gordon (Gary Oldman) and the genius inventor Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman).

One of the women is the always enigmatic Catwoman (Anne Hathaway), and the other is Miranda Tate (Marion Cotillard), a millionaire who may be able to rescue Wayne Enterprises after Bane's stock market mischief wipes out Wayne financially. Catwoman is a freelance burglar who's always looking out for number one, and Miranda is a do-gooder environmentalist; both are drawn irresistibly to Bruce, who is not only still a bachelor but has spent the last eight years as a hermit, walled up in Wayne Manor with the loyal Alfred.