What’s more entertaining than knowing someone’s daughter has been molested by her step dad or watching the daughter’s mother struggle with alcoholism? “Georgia Rule,” which co-stars the recently rehabbed Lindsay Lohan, along with Jane Fonda, actually manages to accomplish everything you could possibly imagine! This film attempts to draw in women seeking a touching story of three generations of mothers and daughters finding forgiveness; in actuality it is a farce that shows nothing in the form of sentimentality. As an audience we want to feel sad for the women of “Georgia Rule,” unfortunately, we never really like them enough to feel bad for them. Instead you just feel bad that someone would make a movie that attempts to make pedophilia a lighthearted topic.
The fun begins when Rachel Wilcox (Lohan), a wild-child teenager (not too far-fetched from Lohan’s real life persona), cannot be controlled by her chain-smoking/boozer-of-a-mother Lilly (Felecity Huffman) and is sent far away from her California digs to good ole’ Idaho. And when Lilly finally throws in the towel, she doles out the only punishment she hasn’t used yet and, it’s off to her grandmother’s Rachel goes. Grandma is Georgia (Jane Fonda), Lilly’s estranged mother. Rachel has an inkling that her grandma is tough and immediately goes on the defensive, coyly rolling her eyes and refusing to obey any of Georgia’s rules (oh look, that’s the title!), which range from eating and sleeping on a schedule to doing anything and everything she says obediently. On and on Georgia and Rachel go, fighting against each other’s will, until, low and behold, they start to like each other.
What seemingly starts off looking innocent enough, grandma and granddaughter bonding over oatmeal, soon gets weird. Georgia quickly becomes very un-grandma-like: She cusses like a trucker, yet insists that anyone taking the “Lord’s name in vain” has to wash their mouth out with soap. More like “Mommie Dearest” than a loving grandma. And even more disturbing is seeing our heroine, Rachel, give oral sex on a rowboat to the town’s innocent Mormon boy just because she wants to corrupt his virgin soul ? like she was corrupted by her groping stepfather who molested her since she was twelve. What the heck, did we all just take the choo-choo train to Strange-ville?
Beyond the dismal plot, Lohan’s acting is what really sent this film down into the depths of shamelessness. Let’s get this dingy broad out of show biz and permanently in rehab, because it is painful to see her act! What happened to that sweet girl in the “The Parent Trap” remake or that hip teenager in “Mean Girls”? She used to be good – key words “used to be.” Now it looks like someone is forcing her to be in a film (check out “I Know Who Killed Me”), and she seems bored and putout through her whole performance as Rachel. Lohan’s acting made the story line, which was already cheap, even cheaper. One of the few redeeming qualities of the movie was Huffman, who truly mastered the strung-out, messed-up mom act. Sadly Fonda, like Lohan, was another failure. Fonda was so robotic and emotionless as Georgia was actually nervous during the dishwashing scenes afraid she’d get wet and have a short circuit. And, let’s face it, if you haven’t forgotten about the “Hanoi Jane” incident then you probably still don’t like her anyway.
“Georgia Rule” could have hit the mark if it didn’t try to make all the heavy issues it was carrying seem like a backpack full of cotton candy. Daddy issues and molestation have a place in serious films, not roadside slop like this. Most of all, Lohan is not mature enough or stable enough to handle a role like this, but hopefully one day when she grows up she will be.
