by erin thursby scopes1925@msn.com
B- Rated R 119 min.
Georgia Rule plays less like cinema and more like a Lifetime Movie. That’s not to say that it’s horrible or not worth seeing; it turns out to be one of the best Lifetime Movie-esque movies I’ve ever seen.
It covers all the bases: woman’s relationships with each other, the men who screw them over, the men who make it better and the stuff that makes us cry. But this is not your mother’s Lifetime. If your mom can’t handle Lindsay Lohan loudly declaring that she gave some guy a blowjob, then maybe you shouldn’t take mom.
It’s an interesting combination of women in this flick, which will be the main reason most of the audience will be drawn to see it. Felicity Huffman, Jane Fonda and Lohan dominate the screen for most of the flick.
Lohan plays Rachel Wilcox, the troubled teenage daughter of Lily Wilcox (Felicity Huffman). Rachel is being left with her grandmother for the summer since Lily can’t handle her daughter’s wild ways. Rachel does drugs, drinks and lies to her mother, so she’s packed off to spend the summer with her grandma, whom her mother hasn’t seen in over ten years.
Lindsay Lohan as a spoiled and bratty party girl? Gasp! Whatever Lohan might be in the tabloids, when she was on screen, I empathized with her. This part was tailor-made for her. I might cringe a bit to say this, but she’s not a half-bad actress. I’d love to see her in some sort of low-budget indie flick, just to see what she could do with it.
Georgia imposes structure to life, always having dinner at precisely 6 pm and breakfast at exactly the same time every morning. Later in the film, when Georgia and her daughter have a heart -to-heart, we learn that this imposed structure was Georgia’s way of dealing with an alcoholic husband. Fonda plays the part with a rough- edged classiness, making the most of her screen time in an understated way. After hearing her say “Go f*ck yourself” to a supremely bratty Lohan, my life will never be the same. Fonda, Lohan and Huffman play comedy in the midst of calamity quite well.
The film explores the relationships between the women and how Lily’s relationship with her parents has affected how she handles her own daughter. Lily’s problems with alcoholism stem from her father’s alcoholism and her need to be closer to her father. Georgia’s “Georgia Rules” are an attempt to make sense out of life and to give her daughter structure. But Lily simply felt stifled under her mother’s rules and, in one wringing scene Georgia tells her daughter she never said “I love you” because her own parents never had. To the movie’s credit, Georgia never does come out and tell her daughter that she loves her (things are seldom that easy), but she does tell her granddaughter that she loves her.
Rachel and Georgia might not precisely get along, but they come to an understanding. Rachel is more apt to listen to her grandmother than her mother because there isn’t the same sort of emotional baggage between them. Her grandmother is more apt to show her affection than she would to her daughter for the same reason.
After Lily drops Rachel off, heading for home rather than dealing with her own mother, she soon heads back because of disturbing news. Rachel has declared to a friend of the family that her stepfather Arnold has sexually abused her since she was 12. But Rachel has continually lied to her mother about many different things, such as drug use, and the audience spends some of the flick wondering who to believe. I won’t spoil things by telling you. This ambiguity is what makes the film more interesting than it could be, if it were simply about the aftermath of sexual abuse.
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EU Critic’s Choice Awards
