A painful movie from beginning to end, Georgia Rule is an uneven disaster, populated by annoying characters that distance its squirming audience.  

Director Garry Marshall, who has often honed in on the female psyche with success (Pretty Woman, Runaway Bride, Beaches, and The Other Sister) has misfired big time with this lemon. That this seasoned director teamed with writer Mark Andrus (Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, As Good As It Gets), and assembled a stellar cast, that not only includes his lucky charm/best buddy Hector Elizondo but also the female triumvirate of Fonda/Huffman/Lohan, makes this mess all the sadder for its waste of talent.  

A visit to my own shrink would be preferable to a second screening of this schizophrenic storyline. Centered around three generations of women, who cannot get along, the script of Georgia Rule makes the fatal mistake of not creating a single character that we really care about. Everyone in this mishmash has serious baggage and watching them implode onscreen is not pleasant. We have an alcoholic daughter/mother, a sexual molester step-dad, a lying Lolita, a self-absorbed widower and a rigid, controlling matriarch with a scarred past.  Unfortunately, the audience never gets corralled into sympathizing with these characters—any redeeming qualities they might possess are buried in this confusing, ridiculous story.   

Nothing here makes much sense. Lilly (Huffman) hates her mother Georgia (Fonda) and hasn’t visited in 13 years. Why?  Supposedly Lilly’s daughter Rachel (Lohan) has given her mother so much trouble that she is punishing her by exiling her to a summer with Grandma in the mountains of Idaho. After 13 years? And why would Grandma send sexy granddaughter Rachel to stay with newly widowed town doc—overnight, no less—pulleeeze! Why does Rachel seduce Harlan—a sweet naïve Mormon who is already engaged? (And why are his teeth soooo white?) Why does Rachel hop into bed with Simon, the grieving widower? The questions keep coming, the answers a blur.  

To be fair, there are several supposedly meaningful dialogues between these troubled females, but they are muddled and filled with innuendos to a past. Without enough background information, we are left distanced from these sad women and end up not giving a hoot about them.  

The juxtaposition of offbeat moments of comic relief in a film with serious themes is not new but in Georgia Rule this ploy is truly done in bad taste. Comedic exchanges between Fonda and Huffman about what knife to use on her sexually abusive husband left me queasy. Smart aleck remarks to this predator by Fonda were not funny. A pubescent teen getting an erection after wrestling with Lohan does not elicit hearty guffaws, only awkward grimaces. Why do the Mormons (Harlan and his girlfriend) have to be portrayed as if they are sidekicks of Ernest P. Worrel or Barney Fife? This is not humor—it is stupidity when coupled with the somber themes of this film. Georgia Rule cannot decide what kind of film it wants to be and that proves fatal.  Humor can co-exist with drama in any good film but it must make sense and remain within the bounds of the story’s basic elements.  

The whole film seems an excuse to show off Fonda’s well-preserved body, Lohan’s perky breasts and Huffman’s classy wardrobe.    

And the title of this film -- Georgia Rule?  I rest my case.