A COUPLE of years ago a film came out called Not Another Teen Movie. As rubbish as it was, it hit the nail on the head as far as the subject it was spoofing was concerned.

In recent times Hollywood has been haemorrhaging teen-age movies as if that particular age group is an endangered species.

And the reaction when presented with Mean Girls was: "Oh no, not another teen movie."

But be prepared for a very pleasant surprise. Mean Girls is both funny and clever, and it treats its subject matter with respect and intelligence and still manages to be a lot of fun.

Lindsay Lohan plays Cady Heron, the new girl at North Shore High School in Illinois. It's a new experience for the 15-year-old she was brought up in Africa and taught at home by her zoologist parents.

Cady is clever and kind and also a little naive. Making friends is not going to be easy and she struggles with many of the unwritten social rules that govern the way teenage girls conduct themselves.

But after a rocky start, she does hook up with the elite of the North Shore cliques The Plastics. To the casual observer, this trio "Queen Bee" Regina (McAdams), Gretchen (Chabert) and Karen (Seyfried) would appear to be made up of vacuous, self-obsessed bimbos. This would be a fairly accurate observation, but Cady, desperate for companionship, takes advantage of the girls' invitation to become a "Plastic".

A crash course in fashion and bitchiness follows, but things get complicated when Cady falls for Aaron (Bennett), who just happens to be Regina's ex.

It's the regular high school shenanigans we've seen a hundred times before, but perhaps not with quite so much bite. The humour here is razor sharp and very original.

For this we must thank screenwriter Tina Fey, who gives herself, as Cady's teacher Ms Norbury, some choice lines. "You've got to stop calling each other sluts and whores. It just makes it all right for guys to call you that," she tells a student assembly.

But equally important is the central performance, on which this film really lives or dies. Lohan, who caught the eye earlier this year in the remake of Freaky Friday, slips comfortably into the role of insecure new kid in town turned queen bitch. Her timing is spot on, and she looks good too.

But then all performances are good the catty Plastics, Cady's outside-looking-in friends Janis and Damian (Caplan and Franzese), and the sardonic principal Mr Duvall (the wonderfully deadpan Tim Meadows).

The conclusion may seem too good to be true, but it comes off because everything that has gone before it works so well and so hilariously. A scene in which students must stand on a platform one by one and make a major confession before leaping on their friends below for a quick body surf will surely be one of the funniest of the year (watch out for the girl in the wheelchair).

Mean Girls arrives today like a breath of fresh air, a teenage movie to be enjoyed by teen-agers aged from 13 to 80.

OUT! rating: 8 out of 10

Film writer Stephen Webb reviews MEAN GIRLS

Starring: Lindsay Lohan, Rachel McAdams, Lacey Chabert, Amanda Seyfried, Tina Fey, Lizzy Caplan, Daniel Franzese, Jonathan Bennett

Director: Mark Waters

Certificate: 12a

Running time: 97 mins

Showing from today at: UGC and Cineworld, Swindon