“Georgia Rule” brings to mind Sally’s Rule: Beware slick-looking, big-studio chick flicks directed or written by hacks.
Sure, the production values will be lavish and sparkling. The marquee attractions will be duly enticing. In today’s example, they include able actresses Jane Fonda, Lindsay Lohan and Felicity Huffman. And, no doubt, on one level you’ll enjoy their grandmother-mother-daughter drama for the cute women in cute wardrobes, the idyllic small-town Idaho milieu, and the lighter moments of once and future tabloid queens in comedic banter.
But even the charismatic screen presences of Fonda and Lohan can’t exalt insipid material, especially when a condescending whitewasher like director Garry Marshall is calling the shots. Alongside his, er, magnum opus of Julia Roberts as Prostitute Cinderella — otherwise known as “Pretty Woman” — this mystifyingly popular flinger of cinematic schmaltz has denigrated the female audience by also perpetrating such commercial girl-fantasy felonies as “Beaches,” “The Other Sister,” “Runaway Bride,” and “Frankie and Johnny.”
Listen, as a chick myself, I understand and have even indulged in the guilty pleasures of a weepy, post-breakup Sunday afternoon spent mindlessly wallowing in this sort of distracting fairy tale drivel. But as a film critic, I must object.
“Georgia Rule” takes the deadly serious issues of family dysfunction, substance addiction and particularly child sexual abuse, and exploits and devalues them for banal entertainment. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that screenwriter Mark Andrus is also responsible for adapting 2002’s “Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood,” another example of feminized horror as popcorn fodder.
You can’t blame the cast for wanting tosign on to the project. They were probably paid very well by Universal Pictures for the chance to play the meaty but stock roles of the spitfire disciplinarian grandmother Georgia (Fonda), her alcoholic citified daughter Lilly (Huffman) and Lilly’s slutty rebel daughter Rachel (Lohan).
The gals are thrown together when Rachel is banished from her San Francisco home for an Idahoan timeout during her summer before college. The plot meanders along for quite awhile — a long, slow while — before the crux kicks in. That’s when Rachel makes her allegation that stepfather Arnold (Cary Elwes) sexually abused her from ages 12 to 14.
But don’t worry your pretty heads about that, little ladies. Because “Georgia Rule” has a couple of hottie good guys for you to ogle as all the nasty stuff gets worked out, thanks to actors Garrett Hedlund as a muscular Mormon and Dermot Mulroney as a widowed veterinarian. They are selfless ethical hunks, Prince Charmings of perfection to raise your expectations over what you’ll never have in the real world.
Thanks again, Hollywood.
‘Georgia Rule’
2/5 stars
Starring: Jane Fonda, Lindsay
Lohan, Felicity Huffman
Director: Garry Marshall
Rated R for sexual content and some language
