h, high school. It’s served as the subject for countless movies—many of them complete crap, some merely passable, and a handful that are contemporary classics—among them, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Heathers, Clueless, Election, and Bring It On (not to mention Gus Van Sant’s Columbine-inspired Elephant, an honest-to-goodness Art Film, but also a penetrating observation of high school life).

Mean Girls deserves inclusion among that decidedly rare latter breed of great high school movies. Few studio comedies in recent memory—regardless of their subject—have packed half the incisive wit of Tina Fey’s script, adapted from Rosalind Wiseman’s Queen Bees and Wannabes: Helping Your Daughter Survive Cliques, Gossip, Boyfriends, and Other Realities of Adolescence. With Fey also turning in a supporting turn as a recently divorced math teacher, Tim Meadows as the high school’s principal, Ana Gastayer and Amy Poehler portraying two very different sorts of mothers (the former a worrisome, overprotective parent, the latter the embarrassing Cool Mom who wears clothes better suited to a woman half her age in order to show off her boob job, and offers her 16 year-old daughter and her friends liquor), and Lorne Michaels producing, this is easily the best movie the Saturday Night Live crew’s been largely responsible for in ages.

One of the key elements that distinguishes the above-mentioned great high school movies from lesser fare is that they work as well—or, often times, even better—for an adult audience as for their underage target demographic. I was the oldest non-parent in the theatre where I saw Mean Girls, and I laughed at least twice as much (and, usually, twice as hard) as the Lindsey Lohan faithful.

This is director Mark Waters’ second Lohan vehicle, after last year’s Freaky Friday. The earlier pairing resulted in a fun, if unremarkable (excepting Jamie Lee Curtis’ inspired comedic performance), film, better certainly than most live-action Disney efforts and remakes of movies that weren’t any good in the first place. Which is why I’d give Fey considerably more credit than Waters for Mean Girls’ brilliance, rooted squarely in the hilarious acuity of its dialogue. Still, Waters clearly has a knack for working with young actors. Lohan further establishes herself here as a first-rate comedic actress, and as the eponymous clique of snobby ditzes, Rachel McAdams, Lacey Chabert, and Amanda Seyfried are no less impressive. As Lohan’s romantic interest (and McAdams’ ex), Jonathan Bennett is the cast’s sole weak link, though in fairness, his token character is the film’s most underdeveloped.

Fey and Waters’ most commendable accomplishment here, however, is that they manage to eschew both crass Larry Clark-style teensploitation (on awkward display in last year’s Thirteen, a "gritty" "indie" that, for all its scenery-chewing histrionics and in-your-face provocations, ultimately had less to say than Mean Girls does about all the rigid social strictures that come with being a teenage girl) and PG, family film toothlessness. Though Mean Girls’ bite admittedly devolves somewhat into pat moralizing by its final stretch, it nevertheless leaves its mark. It slyly subverts so many stale genre conventions that its eventual reliance upon a few isn’t too hard to forgive. I’m actually at a loss to recall off-hand the last commercially successful Hollywood release (Mean Girls opened at #1 and only dropped down one spot last weekend, whereas, say, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind hasn’t brought in peanuts compared to what a Jim Carrey movie usually makes) that was this smart, without it being marginalized as one of those not-quite-art-house, now-screening-in-select-cities pseudo-indies. Mean Girls is as good as mainstream moviemaking gets these days.