This is a preview of our pop culture newsletter The Daily Beast’s Obsessed, written by editor Kevin Fallon. To receive the full newsletter in your inbox each week, sign up for it here.
This week:
- The strike is over!
- Mean Girls fans deserve better.
- A weird takeaway from the Inside Out 2 teaser.
- Barbra forever…and ever.
- The things I’d write on a Post-It note…
Fetch Is Still Not Happening
I have never felt so attacked, violated, offended, and disturbed as I did this week while watching, of all things, the trailer for the new Mean Girls movie musical. It was as if I got hit by a bus. Before a few minutes of recreating scenes that, well, looked pretty familiar to the Mean Girls I watched in theaters when I was [age redacted], the trailer flashed the words: “This isn’t your mother’s Mean Girls.”
Excuse me? (Watch it here.)
First of all, this is only acceptable if you are referring to me and my friends who turned Mean Girls into a decades-spanning pop-culture phenomenon as “Mother,” the same way you do when Anne Hathaway serves a great red carpet look or Kelly Clarkson nails another cover song.
But if this is meant to age-shame? To insinuate that this movie is cooler than my generation’s version? The rudeness. But also, let me again articulate: This trailer hints at a movie that is exactly the same as the 2004 one—line for line, scene by scene. There is literally Tina Fey playing the same part. It would seem to be, in fact, exactly your mother’s Mean Girls. (How old do you think we are, by the way?)
Get in loser, we’re going to really go in now: What the hell is this trailer trying to sell? If you’re a keen reader, you will have noticed the words “movie musical” in that first sentence. And, being more of a Kevin Gnapoor than an Aaron Samuels—so smart you are!—you may have also noticed that no one in this trailer is singing, nor is there any hint that this movie is, in fact, a musical.
My breasts can always tell when something is afoot and, right now, my titties are predicting a 30 percent chance that a studio is trying to trick people into seeing a musical by pretending that it isn’t one. To which I say…why? I mean, to be fair, I’ve seen the Mean Girls musical on Broadway and heard the songs, so I can understand why they’re being hidden in this marketing campaign. (Put it in the Burn Book.) Nonetheless, it’s ludicrous to market a movie musical by disguising the fact that it is a musical.
Luckily, the internet agrees. If I could break my tiara and give a piece to each of you, I would. But in lieu of that, here’s a handful of my favorite reactions.
The Inside Out 2 Teaser Is Here
If you are among the beautiful, protected souls who are not aware of how intensely some people sexualize human Disney/Pixar animated characters, I envy you—and I encourage you to retreat immediately. Do not read further.
But if you are among those fluent in the internet’s lust for the mom from The Incredibles’s sumptuous dump truck of a booty, or the greater universe of “Pixar dads who could absolutely destroy me” discourse, then it’s a big week for you. An MVP of that genre, the dad from Inside Out, is making his return to the spotlight, ready to be objectified by our depraved tweets about a cartoon dude with a mustache.
The first teaser for Inside Out 2 is now out (watch it here), and so are Bill Andersen’s (he has a name, people!) most lascivious fans.
A Great Time to Be a Barbra Fan
There are some pop-culture moments that you watch when you’re young, and, though you don’t know why, they end up being formative. You never forget them. When I first watched Barbra Streisand on The Oprah Winfrey Show, I wasn’t a wildly obsessed fan of either of them, the way that I am now. But something about the moment stuck, even if I was so young. (Just a wee baby, I swear!)
The moment in question is when Streisand revealed, after Oprah asked, that she had spray-painted the studio’s microphone “off-white,” to better match her sweater. Oprah could not hide her shock/disgust/thrill—every single emotion in the span of two seconds.
Memory of that surfaced because Streisand’s 992-page memoir was released this week, along with its 48-hour audiobook version. That’s right. Forty-eight-hour. That, somehow, seems even more Barbra than the Oprah microphone bit.
People Finally Got It Right
Then and now: Pick me. Choose me. Love me. **** me.
What to watch this week:
Dream Scenario: A movie for all of us who have wondered, “Why is Nicolas Cage in my dream?” (In theaters)
The Curse: Get ready for the weirdest show of the year. (Now on Paramount+, Sun. on Showtime)
For All Mankind: This is the best show you’re not watching. So watch it! (Now on Apple TV+)
What to skip this week:
The Marvels: The Meh-vels. See what I did there? (Now in theaters)
It’s a Wonderful Knife: At least the title is good. (Now in theaters)
