12 Best Movies Like Mean Girls

Without question, "Mean Girls" is one of the funniest and best high school movies ever made. Written by Tina Fey and directed by Mark Waters, the movie — which is based loosely on "Queen Bees and Wannabes" by Rosalind Wiseman — begins when Cady Heron (Lindsay Lohan) moves with her family from Africa to a Chicago suburb only to become the new girl at North Shore High School. After getting a crash course on the school's cliques from outcasts Janis Ian (Lizzy Caplan) and Damian Leigh (Daniel Franzese), Cady finds herself falling in with the school's popular girls, known as "the Plastics." Led by the evil, conniving, and beautiful Regina George (Rachel McAdams) — who's flanked by gossip queen Gretchen Weiners (Lacey Chabert) and the lovable but very dumb Karen Smith (Amanda Seyfried) — the Plastics are the defacto leaders of the school, and as they take Cady under their wing, she's corrupted by their influence.

There are actually a lot of great movies set in high school, and there are a lot of great teen comedies ... but if you love "Mean Girls," what specific movies should you check out next? We've got you covered. From Jane Austen adaptations to some seriously, wonderfully strange modern high school movies to a movie that engineered a massive acapella phenomenon, here are 12 movies you should watch after watching (or re-watching) "Mean Girls." (An important note: the 2024 "Mean Girls" movie musical is not on this list, because aside from Renée Rapp's beautifully Sapphic reinterpretation of Regina George, that movie sucks.)

Not only did Mark Waters' older brother Daniel write the script for the 1988 dark high school comedy "Heathers" — which was ultimately directed by Michael Lehmann — there's no denying that "Mean Girls" is heavily inspired by "Heathers" in the first place. The movie centers around four high school girls, and yes, three of them are named Heather — Heather Duke (Shannen Doherty), Heather McNamara (Lisanne Falk), and Heather Chandler (Kim Walker), who form the school's most powerful clique. The fourth member of the group, Veronica Sawyer (Winona Ryder), is unceremoniously booted out after she refuses to participate in a demented tradition at a frat party and throws up all over Chandler, who says she'll ruin Veronica's reputation in retribution. 

To be clear, "Heathers," which literally ends with several characters dead, is much, much darker than "Mean Girls," but it's the obvious spiritual predecessor to "Mean Girls" even if you ignore the family connection between the Waters brothers; Chandler certainly inspired Regina George's worst moments, to be sure. "Heathers" is great, but check trigger warnings; it involves quite a bit of gun violence and suicide.

Amy Heckerling's 1995 high school classic might be a modern interpretation of Jane Austen's novel "Emma" — about a heroine who looks out for everybody else while putting her own happiness on the backburner more often than not — but it's also a movie that eventually paved the way for "Mean Girls." When we first meet Cher Horowitz, played winningly by a young Alicia Silverstone, she cheekily asks the audience, "Okay, so you're probably going, 'Is this like a Noxzema commercial or what?' But seriously, I actually have a way normal life for a teenage girl." This is sort of true. Cher has a best friend (Dionne Davenport, played by Stacey Dash) and a solid relationship with her hot-tempered litigator dad Mel Horowitz (Dan Hedaya), but she also lives in a Los Angeles mansion and has a computer that puts together her outfits every day. To her, it might be "way normal," but for most of us, it's pretty charmed.

The late, great Brittany Murphy shows up in the film pretty early on as new student Tai Frasier, and Cher decides to give her a makeover; in this way, Tai is a pretty great stand-in for Cady Heron (especially because Cher is anything but mean). As friendships fracture and mend between Cher, Tai, and Dionne and Cher searches for love — which she says doing in high school as "as useless for searching for meaning in a Pauly Shore movie" — we get to ride along, and you'll definitely want to be in the passenger seat for "Clueless."

Emma Seligman's 2023 comedy "Bottoms" is, to put it lightly, delightfully insane; imagine if one of those scenes in "Mean Girls" where Cady imagines her classmates as vicious wild animals at an African watering hole was, like, an entire movie. Unpopular best friends PJ (Rachel Sennott) and Josie (Ayo Edebiri), both of whom are lesbians and virgins hoping to get some experience before college, end up the subject of a wild rumor that they spent their summer in a juvenile detention center. Instead of dispelling the rumor, PJ comes up with a gorgeously demented idea: she and Josie should start a fight club so they can seduce girls.

This goes about as well as you might expect, honestly. Somehow, they get one of their school's teachers, Mr. G (a stunningly good Marshawn Lynch) to serve as the faculty advisor, even though that seems unnecessary when you consider that the school in "Bottoms" may or may not have any actual classes or rules; in a throwaway gag, the school announces at one point, over the loudspeaker, that there's no room in the budget for "books" for the entire school year. Anyway, the conclusion to "Bottoms" is delightfully insane, bloody, and over-the-top, and thanks to great supporting turns from Nicholas Galitzine, Kaia Gerber, Ruby Cruz, and Havana Rose Liu, "Bottoms" is officially part of the high school film canon.

Written and directed by comedian Bo Burnham, the 2018 film "Eighth Grade" isn't technically about high school, and it's also not really all that funny. Still, it's a movie in the spirit of "Mean Girls" about learning to accept yourself as a young woman being told what you should look like, what you should wear, what you should eat, and what you should do when you're at a particularly vulnerable age. The film chronicles Kayla Day's (a phenomenally great Elsie Fisher) final week of eighth grade in a small upstate New York town, and even though Kayla spends her time posting inspirational videos about self-image online, she suffers from dismally low self-esteem and struggles to find her place as she prepares to head to high school. 

"Eighth Grade" deals with peer pressure, especially when it comes to a young woman's sexuality, and tackles thorny issues like self-acceptance; ultimately, even though Kayla desperately tries to reinvent herself before graduation, she realizes that she needs to come to terms with who she actually is, not who she thinks she can potentially become if she tries hard enough. The film is heartfelt in all the ways that "Mean Girls" often isn't, but in that way, it's a perfect companion piece.

If you've ever broken into a chant that starts with "I'm sexy, I'm cute / I'm popular to boot," you're probably already familiar with "Bring It On," the cheerleader-centric high school comedy helmed by future Marvel director Peyton Reed. As Torrance Shipman (a beautifully menacing Kirsten Dunst) plans for her senior year and is chosen to lead her cheer squad the Toros, who have won six championships in a row, one of her fellow cheerleaders gets injured ... so she enlists gymnast Missy Pantone (Eliza Dushku), a new student at Rancho Carne High School, to join the squad. When Missy points out that she thinks that the team is stealing cheer routines from the Toros' biggest rival, the East Compton Clovers, a wedge grows between the girls, Torrance realizes that the previous captain was plagiarizing routines from the Clovers, and she sets out to put her own mark on the Toros.

With all due respect to cheerleaders, they are associated with "mean girl" high school cliques, and the stereotypical Toros aren't all that different. Even as Torrance is tempted to basically abandon her teammates for her own gain, she still ends up sticking by her friends, especially Missy (and Missy's brother Cliff, played by Jesse Bradford, who ends up as Torrance's love interest). If you especially love the "Jingle Bell Rock" scene in "Mean Girls," check out "Bring It On."

Written by Alison Peck and directed by Sammi Cohen, the Netflix original movie "You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah" has some serious star power in front of the camera in the form of comedy legend Adam Sandler — but he wisely steps aside and gives center stage to his real-life daughter Sunny Sandler, who leads the film as 13-year-old Stacy Friedman. Something that Peck and Cohen capture perfectly in "You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah" is how enormous every single stumbling block feels when you're a young woman, which is definitely a huge part of "Mean Girls" too ... but instead of competing for Spring Fling queen, Stacy is laser-focused on making her upcoming bat mitzvah into an enormous success. Along the way, Stacy and her best friend Lydia Rodriguez Katz (Samantha Lorraine) get into a huge fight over a boy, at which point Stacy takes a page out of Regina George's burn book and spreads a nasty rumor about Lydia; this even builds to a horrible prank gone wrong where Stacy accidentally plays an embarrassing video at Lydia's own bat mitzvah.

"You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah" has a bigger heart and a far less biting wit than "Mean Girls," but if you were ever a teenage girl, this movie will feel just as familiar as "Mean Girls" did when it first came out in 2004. As Stacy "becomes a woman" in the Jewish tradition, she learns what it means to be a better person, just like Cady does as she falls from her own pedestal in "Mean Girls." (Plus, Stacy ends up sharing her extravagant bat mitzvah with Lydia, just like Cady shares her Spring Fling crown.)

What if everyone in "Mean Girls" turned their vitriol and attention towards a bad dude instead of their fellow girls? That's sort of the question asked by the 2006 high school comedy "John Tucker Must Die," directed by Betty Thomas and written by Jeff Lowell. When teenager Kate Spencer (Brittany Snow) sees her popular classmate John Tucker (Jesse Metcalfe) out on three separate dates with three wildly different girls — the type-A Carrie Schaeffer (Arielle Kebbel), art student Beth McIntyre (Sophia Bush), and head cheerleader Heather Montgomery (Ashanti), she realizes that he's fooling all of them and decides to do something about it. After meeting Carrie, Beth, and Heather in detention, she confirms their suspicions about John, and the four girls team up to bring the scheming guy down. Unfortunately, pranks don't do the trick, and he simply dumps Carrie, Heather, and Beth in turn, so they decide to send Kate in as a decoy to break his heart and avenge them.

"John Tucker Must Die" is a frothy, fun high school comedy where girls team up together instead of fighting amongst themselves, and even though Kate's deception corrupts her like Cady's popularity does to her, everything turns out okay in the end. Honestly, "Mean Girls" and "John Tucker Must Die" would make a hell of a double feature.

If Cady never fell in with the Plastics in "Mean Girls," she'd probably be a lot like Olive Penderghast (Emma Stone), the nerdy, witty protagonist of Will Gluck and Bert V. Royal's incredible 2010 high school comedy "Easy A." Very loosely based on Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter" — which is referenced constantly throughout the movie — the film's inciting incident happens when high school student Olive, desperate to get out of a camping trip with her best friend Rhiannon (Aly Michalka) and her weird family, pretends that she's spending the weekend with a boy. The boy does not exist, but when Olive returns to school on Monday, everybody is wondering if Olive lost her virginity to this totally made-up person, and after gaining a reputation as an "easy" woman, Olive figures out how to use it to her benefit. During a party, Olive pretends to (loudly) sleep with her friend Brandon (Dan Byrd), who doesn't want to come out as gay to their classmates; after Brandon shares the secret with a few friends, Olive starts pretending to sleep with people for stuff like Home Depot gift cards.

This obviously crashes and burns pretty spectacularly, but it's still really, really fun to watch Stone, who's incredibly good in this movie, strut around in corsets with a scarlet "A" sewn onto the bust and taunt her classmates. Plus, Patricia Clarkson and Stanley Tucci play two of the best fictional parents of all time, Olive's folks Rosemary and Dill — what more could you even ask for?

Mash up "Mean Girls" and "John Tucker Must Die" and you basically get "Do Revenge" — and to be perfectly clear, that's a compliment. Jennifer Kaytin Robinson's 2022 high school comedy kicks off when Drea Torres (Camila Mendes), a popular girl at Miami's Rosehill Country Day High School who gets a rude awakening when her boyfriend Max Broussard (Austin Abrams) sends an explicit video meant only for him to a bunch of his friends. Furious over his betrayal, Drea meets an unlikely ally working at a tennis camp — new student Eleanor Levetan, played by Maya Hawke — and enlists her help so the two of them can take Max down once and for all. The two girls discover that Max is now cheating on his new girlfriend Tara (Alisha Boe) when school begins in September, and their plan to expose Max's lies intensifies.

Thanks to a killer soundtrack, an amazing cameo turn from "Game of Thrones" veteran Sophie Turner, and a few clever twists and turns in the script, "Do Revenge" is yet another worthy successor to "Mean Girls," combining the acerbic wit of "Mean Girls" with the lust for revenge against a bad guy we saw in "John Tucker Must Die." Queue up this one for your next movie night; unlike Max, you won't regret your choices.

Okay, so plot-wise, "Freaky Friday," which came out in 2003, doesn't have a lot in common with "Mean Girls" except for two things: Lindsay Lohan stars in both movies with Mark Waters behind the camera as director. In this teen comedy, Lohan plays the rebellious, young, and musically talented Anna Coleman, who constantly butts heads with her mother, psychologist Tess (Jamie Lee Curtis, who should have an Oscar for this role). As the mother and daughter prepare for Tess' upcoming wedding to Ryan (Mark Harmon), they have a public argument in front of the proprietor of a Chinese restaurant, who uses magic to make them switch bodies.

Hijinks ensue, and as Bill Hader's Stefon from "Saturday Night Live" would say, this movie has everything: Curtis shredding on guitar, Lohan playing an uptight mom, and Chad Michael Murray singing Britney Spears' hit song "...Baby One More Time" off-key in the hopes of romancing the woman he thinks is Tess (but is actually Anna stuck in her mom's body). If you love "Mean Girls," you've got to watch "Freaky Friday."

Again, on a surface level, "Pitch Perfect" and "Mean Girls" don't seem all that similar, but think about it: a new girl infiltrates a closely knit group only to show them the error of their ways and, somehow, bring them closer together. Directed by Jason Moore and written by Kay Cannon, the 2012 film that, alongside "Glee," helped bring a capella back into the mainstream stars Anna Kendrick as the aforementioned new girl, Beca Mitchell, who arrives at Barden College to study music and finds herself weirdly fascinated by the all-girl a capella group, the Barden Bellas. Led with an iron fist by Aubrey Posen (Anna Camp) and her consigliere Chloe Beale (Brittany Snow), the Barden Bellas have been performing the same tired routine for years, and as a result, they keep losing competition titles to groups like the all-boy team, the Treblemakers. As she illicitly mingles with new Treblemaker Jesse Swanson (Skyler Astin), Bella tries to give the Bellas some new ideas, only for Aubrey to resist ... until Beca, an aspiring music producer, revolutionizes their arrangements.

"Pitch Perfect" spawned a lot of sequels that provide pretty diminishing returns, but the first one has some distinct similarities to "Mean Girls" and is just as much fun. If you're not allergic to people bursting into song, give "Pitch Perfect" a try.

When we first meet young Jenna Rink in "13 Going on 30" — the 2004 romantic comedy directed by Gary Winick and written by Cathy Yuspa and Josh Goldsmith — she's played by Christa B. Allen and is desperate to impress the clique of "mean girls" at her middle school, who are led by Lucy "Tom-Tom" Wyman (Alexandra Kyle). (Blink and you'll miss her, but a young Brie Larson plays one of Tom-Tom's acolytes.) After her disastrous birthday party where she looks like a loser and betrays her best friend Matty Flamhaff (Sean Marquette), Jenna wishes to be 30 ... and when she wakes up, she's a magazine editor (and played by Jennifer Garner) whose best friend is a grown-up Lucy (now played by Judy Greer). Matt Flamhaff, played in adulthood by Mark Ruffalo, is no longer in Jenna's life, and she has to discover what happened between 13 and 30 and how she can fix the mistakes she's apparently made.

The entire driving incident of "13 Going on 30" is an actual group of mean girls, and as an adult, Jenna is horrified to discover she's one of them. Like Cady Heron, Jenna ultimately realizes that it's better to be kind, generous, and warm, and transforms her adult life before transporting back to her 13-year-old world. "Mean Girls" might not have magic wishes gone wrong, but "13 Going on 30" pairs with it perfectly.