Georgia Rule (2007)

Highly Overrated But Still Good

It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

What a difference three years makes. Back in 2004 Lindsay Lohan was wickedly fresh as a daisy in the teenage drama "Mean Girls". Three years later in "Georgia Rule", I look at her and I ask myself, what happened? I mean she's still got some sort of physical attraction here, but compared to "Mean Girls", she looks jaded and looking like she's entering into a world of sorrow and lament. It feels like she's aged drastically. At the time Lohan was 21 years old, but in "Georgia Rule", she looks like she's aged to 31."Georgia Rule" is equally disjointed and out of focus as Lohan's physical presence. It's kind of a sinister, out of touch film that focuses primarily on three generations of the Wilcox/Randall family clan. Wehave the tough and disciplined grandmother Georgia Randall (Jane Fonda),the ever inebriated mother Lilly (Felicity Huffman) and the rebellious,sex-craving daughter, Rachel (Lohan). The idea of an out-of control daughter may have some levels of intrigue, but director Garry Marshall and screenwriter Mark Andrus turn a blind eye towards her incorrigible ways. Let alone the fact that Miss Lohan looks less like a teenager and more like a lounge singer playing Broadway musicals in karaoke bars.Maybe it might work in the Hollywood industry, but switch to reality for just a second, but if the opening scenes feature a teenage daughter, belittling, ostracizing and verbally bullying your own mother, you're all programmed to hate this snotty little punk. Oh, that's right, Rachel is an angry late adolescent who's so undisciplined that her mother made her leave her home in San Francisco to spend some time at grandma's house in Idaho, where she's hopes will set her straight. Where's the responsibility mom? Or is something I like to call an urban renewal?Does Grandma Georgia really need an incorrigible child placed at her doorstep? She's a women of moral restriction with an obsessive compulsiveness for tight, at the exact minute of scheduling, even though she seems lenient towards the neighborhood children. But she still dwells back to the fact her daughter's a drunk and her granddaughter is out-of-control and promiscuous. The purpose of this story is that in spite all their shortcomings, they love each other. But it's panned out in the cruelest of taste.The tone of the film is extremely jarring it left me wondering are these people for real? The movie was made to have a light drama with touches of comedy for good measure. But I felt very little in lightness or anything I could pass off as comical. This movie was cynical in approach and Marshall gave us the impression that his audience are as mixed up as the characters on screen.One supposed "funny" scene has Rachel making lustful passes with an overly religious Mormon named Harlan Wilson (Garrett Hedlund) then performing off camera oral sex. It gets better! There's a scene where she threatens these goody-goody Mormon girls to engage in lascivious relations with their boyfriends. In other words, be like her and you will be "cool". But is she "cool"? Not in the slightest, in fact I find her and her dysfunctional family nothing more than hypocrites who preach but don't practice.Here we have Rachel threatening these girls she will get all raunchy with their other halves and yet we get a revealing that Rachel's step-father, Arnold (Cary Elwes) sexually molested her. By now Lilly is now a full-blown inebriate. Which is strange because Grandma Georgia disallows alcoholism in her household and yet she's got shelves of booze to keep Lilly amused as she's lying in her underwear getting stewed. This is a horrible family with horrible people and it sickens me that Fonda, Huffman and Lohan are incredibly talented performers makes it even harder to swallow. It's not that they're wasting away here every foundation of this movie is based off of lies. It tries to be truthful, but fails at every attempt.The sexual abuse subplot is the the hardest one to take into account because of the hypocrisy that comes all around. We get cringing jokes about oral sex and yet you have Rachel, flaunting around town engaging in sexual activities with the town. But then we're supposed to feel sorry for her once the serious topic of sexual abuse comes around and we're forced into thinking she's just a poor lost soul. Like we should just forget about all the heartbreak Rachel has because we don't approve of her stepfather who sexually abused her when she was twelve.

This was a great story that hits close to home for way more people than we think. I think all the actors and actresses did a great job portraying the evil of the world as well as showing the good. A real tear jerk-er that shows a dysfunctional screwed up family who pull together and beat the evil with good old fashioned family values and love. I wonder if this isn't some of Lindsay Lohan true life. Someone who was born innocent and robbed of that innocence by the evil money grubbing sex addicts in the Hollywood under world. I am pleasantly surprised that Hollywood took this story and shed light on it for the world to see. When grown men sexually abuse young women or even boys you are robbing them of there innocence. I hate Jane Fonda and her liberal Hollywood views but I give her kudos for playing Georgia.

Well, it was entertaining enough, but...This movie was marketed as a comedy, which is totally inaccurate since there are surprisingly few "funny" moments. For some people probably none at all.It was not the light-hearted comedy I thought it was going to be. It's quite a serious movie that deals with serious issues.Lindsay Lohan did a fine job... portraying her real-life self. She was so convincing as a spoiled stuck-up party girl because she didn't have to act.Also, there was zero chemistry between characters and you could actually tell that they can't stand / couldn't care less for each other. None of them seem to have bothered to "own" their respective roles; instead, they just showed up and did their jobs -- that's the vibe you get from this movie.Nevertheless, it's quite an O.K. movie -- for those interested in this genre (drama).

As many of the other reviews stated, the trailer for this movie was severely misleading. The clip is a short collection of what some might consider the most comical scenes in the movie. If it weren't for other users, I wouldn't have even considered watching Georgia Rules. Because I had assumed it was 'just another chick flick'. Which it is far from.Georgia Rules tells the story of a rebellious teenager, Lindsay Lohan, sent to spend the summer in a remote town in Idaho. Living with her Grandmother, Jane Fonda, whose rules are strict and affection limited- Lindsay Lohan's Mother, Felicity Huffman, hopes for a change in her daughter's behaviour. Initially, the Mother seems sane and relatively unperturbed by her hectic life. It later becomes clear that her coping mechanism is an alcoholic tendency, which she inherited from her Father. Each of the women have difficult relationships with each other. And its clear that Mothers and Daughters are not allies in the family. Born and raised in California, Lindsay and Felicity (Who portray Rachael and Lilly), create quite a stir in a quiet religious town. This isn't a romantic comedy. In fact, there's very little romance at all. The last line of the movie, to me, was the funniest. I didn't find this movie comical, I found it tragic. Each of the characters are complex. So complex, its very credible. Each of them do wrong, but in their wrong there is right. Several times through out, Rachael (Lindsay Lohan), is told that she no longer knows the difference between right and wrong. And in so many ways, that is the underlying moral of this story. The fact that there is a fine line between two opposites.This is only enforced, when the audience apprehends that Rachael had in fact been sexually molested by her step father as a child, and that her being a "slut" was merely a quest for rejection. She looks for rejection. The confusion of emotions, the mistrusting, the growing relationships and human mistakes- make this movie worth watching. And, for me at least, easy to relate to.