Georgia Rule

Critic Rating:

A movie that pushes all the buttons the paying public wants pushed, but is barely, if ever, very credible.

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'Georgia Rule' heads south fast

By John DeFore
Austin American Statesman

"Tonight, on a very special episode of 'Blossom' ... "

Why is it that, on the rare occasions Hollywood deigns to build a film around actresses (and, even rarer, older actresses), they do it with scripts whose heart-tugging themes are as broad and unsubtle as the gags in the average teen comedy?

It's true that many women (and men, for that matter) want stories about something more real than Ferrari-driving drug cartels and treasure-mad pirates; it's true that these are so rare that even simplistic fluff such as "Georgia Rule" can scratch the itch. But it sure would be gratifying if filmmakers offered women something more substantial.

Originating from the conspicuously all-male team of Garry Marshall (of the questionable fairy tale "Pretty Woman") and writer Mark Andrus (whose last screenplay had something to do with Ya-Ya Sisters), "Georgia Rule" depicts three generations of women with the emotional intelligence of cable-news talk show hosts.

There's Lindsay Lohan, an out-of-control teen (it's a stretch) who has thrown one tantrum too many; Felicity Huffman, the Benz-driving mom who has had enough and is dumping the kid on grandma for the summer; and Jane Fonda as Georgia, a matriarch whose lack of maternal emotion and insistence on unbreakable rules make her a less funny version of Ricky Bobby's mom in "Talladega Nights."

Fonda also enjoys speaking of herself in the third person (as in, "Georgia Rule: We do not discuss 'Barbarella.'"), which might trigger some kind of alert for any child-welfare officer evaluating her fitness to rehabilitate Lohan.

The scene is set in a bundle of small-town clichés known as Hull, Idaho. Lohan's Rachel arrives and wreaks some predictable havoc on the locals, who either have never heard of sex or choose to believe it happens solely between consenting cattle.

She's particularly rough on Harlan, a hunk of heartland biomass who, though a bit simple in the head, is the film's most likable character. Harlan has pledged his love and 'til-marriage virginity to a fellow Mormon, but makes the mistake of taking Rachel out in his little fishing boat: While Fido barks a warning on the shore ("What's that, Fido? My 'special purpose'?"), she helps him find some flexibility in the definition of "sexual relations."

Rachel, of course, is "acting out," which in the movies indicates ugly, sprawling character flaws that trace back to a tidy, easily explained cause. The script takes a lot of time with that, introducing a possible adolescent trauma, and then being coy for an hour or so about whether it really happened. (Mom and Grandma pack their own easily diagnosed ills.)

In the meantime, Marshall directs truly lousy performances from Lohan and Cary Elwes (as Rachel's stepdad) while leaving Huffman and Fonda to their own devices.

Scratch that: If Fonda and Huffman were truly on their own, fans might expect them to come up with something a bit more interesting than "Georgia Rule," a movie that pushes all the buttons the paying public wants pushed, and delivers the occasional zinger, but is barely, if ever, very credible.