“This isn’t your mother’s Mean Girls”, a marketing phrase for the same–titled remake that opened a couple of days ago, may have sounded to some like a taunt or a brag.

But according to screenwriter Tina Fey in a 1.10 N.Y. Times interview piece by Ashley Spencer, it was sorta kinda meant to reassure.

Having written the 2004 version as well as the newbie, Fey didn’t want her present-tense high-school bitches to violate current standards — no fatphobic or homophobic humor, for example.

Mean Girls is a critical bust on RT and Metacritic — 70% and 59%, respectively. And yet the somewhat-less-discriminating Joe and Jane Popcorn went for it over the last two nights — an estimated $31.5M weekend tally.

I re-watched the 2004 original a few weeks ago. For the usual HE reasons I decided to bypass the current version.