In Hollywood’s latest venture into the teenage movie genre, “Mean Girls” is a well-written movie that anybody from teenagers to parents may enjoy.

The movie provides plenty of laughs, satire, and insight into the seemingly important and complex social world of high school.

Featuring Lindsay Lohan, “Mean Girls” tells the story from the perspective of Cady Heron, a new student in her junior year of high school who had previously been home-schooled by her parents while they lived in Africa.

Among the many obstacles Cady faces while attempting to adjust to the social structure of high school is to find the right group of people to become friends with.

The first couple of days in school, Cady meets two outcasts who immediately befriend her.

Cady eventually and reluctantly drops them so she can join a clique of the three most popular girls in the school known as the Plastics in reference to their synthetically inspired beauty.

“Mean Girls” proves to be different from most in its class.

This movie does not rely on teenage stereotypes and over-recycled formulas to hold the plot together and use sexual innuendo in a desperate attempt to hold the viewers’ attention.

Although “Mean Girls” is not entirely original, it offers a witty satirical look at high school life for teens living in a time of plastic surgery and carb counting.

Regina (Rachel McAdams) is the image and fashion conscious ringleader of the Plastics. She manages to manipulate her two underlings, Karen (Amanda Seyfried) and Gretchen (Lacey Chabert).

Regina gets the other two girls thinking, saying, and doing whatever she feels like, from wearing pink Fridays to going out with certain guys.

Cady is soon able to join these girls and live the ultimate adolescent lifestyle that so many girls in school can only dream about.

She becomes popular, pretty and powerful.

But she starts to pick up traits of Regina; she gradually becomes vain, materialistic and manipulative.

This kind of movie might remind viewers of “Clueless,” which was released in the mid ’90s and ran roughly along the same lines; characters seem to be similar.

Just as in that movie, “Mean Girls” is also effectively able to use adults to support the script.

Most exceptional are Saturday Night Live notables Tina Fey (Ms. Norbury) and Tim Meadows, (Mr. Duvall) who have actually created original characters, something that is rare in this genre where the adults are usually idiotic and misunderstanding.

Tim Meadows plays the hilarious school principal who has about had it with his job.

Tina Fey plays Cady’s math teacher who, unlike teachers in other movies, actually cares about her students and finds potential in them.

The most appealing aspect of the movie is that although it contains some adult material ranging from profanity to prophylactics, there is actually a moral message interlaced in it that makes people think.

An anomaly in the age of “American Pie” and “The Girl Next Door,” “Mean Girls” sends an important message to people who are emotionally vulnerable.

The movie also tells viewers that there is nothing wrong with being one’s own self.

“Mean Girls” is directed by Mark S. Waters, written by Tina Fey, based on the book “Queen Bees and Wannabes” by Rosalind Wiseman.

(This movies recieves four out of five stars. This movie is rated PG-13)