Screen Scene: “Georgia Rule”

“Georgia Rule”

Director Garry Marshall

Universal Pictures

(Out Of 5)

It’s hard to say what truly makes a film heartwarming, uplifting and family friendly. However, suffice to say, “Georgia Rule” is far from making the grade.

Starring Jane Fonda, Felicity Huffman and Lindsay Lohan as three generations of women dealing with heartbreak in Idaho, it’s hard to believe this exaggerated, stiff and vulgar film is from the same man behind “Pretty Woman” and “Runaway Bride” (Garry Marshall).

Apparently it’s never too late to lose the golden touch.

The premise at first seems easy enough. Troubled daughter Rachel (Lohan) is sentenced to a prison-like sentence of an entire summer in Hull, Idaho, with her famously strict grandmother, Georgia (Fonda).

Rachel is both a parent and peer’s worse nightmare, cursing and throwing extreme temper tantrums while prancing around the town square in short shorts attempting to seduce the local Mormon dreamboat and the emotionally damaged town veterinarian all in one fell swoop.

While it seems this would be the perfect time for Georgia’s sassy attitude and iron-clad rules to stabilize Rachel’s life, equally crazed mother Lilly then jumps back into the picture with her own world of issues. Rachel tries to finally come clean about the reasoning behind her partying, drug use and other such dangerous antics, and all hell breaks lose.

One of the main problems with the screenplay is how much it strays from the basic plot of truly reversing Rachel’s rebellious ways by way of Georgia, leaving Fonda’s talents wasted on a superficial role. Lohan is surprisingly magnetic in the shoes of Rachel, stealing scenes from veterans Fonda and Huffman, who is predictable and boring as Lilly.

Some of this credit is due to the attention paid to the female characters ““ sometimes too much attention, as Rachel’s long list of indiscretions and questionable behavior quickly goes from reasonable to barely plausible. All the scenes devoted to Lohan’s flirtatious efforts leave the male characters incomplete and extremely one-dimensional.

The script itself is almost as erratic as Rachel and her head case of a mother, Lilly; a true focal point is never clearly defined, and the film almost serves as a collage of bad Lifetime movie plot points.

Georgia rule: Either eat dinner at 6 p.m. or wait for breakfast the next morning.

New Georgia rule: Go back to PG-rated romantic comedies, Marshall, and leave the sex, drug and alcohol commentaries for Lohan’s personal life.

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