A lot of people tsked-tsked at the reports of Lindsay Lohan's behavior on the set of this picture, which so upset an executive at its production company that he sent her a blunt letter upbraiding her, which was summarily leaked to the press. Having now seen Georgia Rule, I can say that if there was ever a film project that deserved sabotaging, this is it.
The most salient feature of director Marshall and screenwriter Mark Andruss' vision is how it manages to have things both ways — that is, it's as egregious and loathsome a caricature of blue-state America as it is of so-called "flyover country." The movie begins with Huffman's Lily wrenching her rebellious daughter Rachel out of the Bay Area to spend a corrective summer in small-town Idaho with grandmother Georgia, a no-nonsense toughie fond of stuffing soap into the mouths of those who take the lord's name in vain. This Idaho town is apparently entirely bereft of any attractive teenage girls, so the slinky, scantily clad Rachel immediately makes an impression on local vet Mulroney and Mormon hunk Hedlund.
Rachel's an ickily classic male fantasy of a bad girl whose sexual expressions are invariably linked to hostility and aggression. Perfect, really — you tick her off and she'll put out. Her outrageousness, as when she impulsively fellates the Mormon, is meant to be hilarious. But then it's revealed that she was abused for years by her stepfather (Elwes, no longer the gallant of The Princess Bride), and so then it's not so hilarious. Until a couple of minutes later, when it's hilarious again.
And so it goes, leaving an awful taste and the inevitable question: Jane Fonda made a comeback to do dreck like this and Monster-in-Law?
