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Film Review: Georgia Rule Monday, May 21, 2007 - There's probably a little dysfunction in every family out there, no matter if we are comfortable admitting it or not. I was expecting Georgia Rule to be a film about family relationships as they crossed generations, but I wasn't really aware I would see the dysfunction I did. As I became completely caught up in it in the movie theatre and making comparisons to my own life, I had to wonder if the others in the theatre were as well. Lindsay Lohan stars as Rachel, the rebellious daughter of Lilly (Felicity Huffman), an alcoholic. When Lilly can no longer control Rachel's rebellion, she sends her off to live with her own mother, Georgia (Jane Fonda), a person who Lilly can't even stand to be around. Rachel is definitely not pleased to be moved from comfortable San Francisco, California to the mostly Mormon Hull, Idaho. Rachel gets so irritated at her mother during the drive across country that she hops out of the car twenty miles from town and walks until she gets tired. She's found lying by the side of the road by a local hottie, Harlan (Garrett Hedlund). He can't believe how forward she is, and drops her in the care of Simon (Dermot Mulroney), a local veterinarian who routinely violates his license by treating people. Confusing things even more, Simon used to date Lilly before she broke his heart and moved out to California.
While Georgia isn't Mormon, she prescribes to many of the same rules and creates some of her own as well, which she calls "Georgia Rules." After Rachel arrives, she's informed she can't sleep on the couch, as only sleeping upstairs is allowed under Georgia Rules. She must do her own dishes, despite never having done them before in her life, and also must hold down a job during her stay which happens to be as a receptionist in Simon's veterinary office. Although Rachel is 17 years old, she is forced to shove a bar of soap in her mouth every time she says, "Oh my God." Rachel finds irony in this since earlier Georgia had been using the "F" word. There's no doubt that Rachel is an incredibly smart girl, as she's on her way to Vassar in the fall. Bored with the daily life in Hull, she makes it her personal mission to change Harlan's virginity status and to dig deeper into Simon's life to find out why he is the way he is, and why he won't pick up the passes she's tossing at him. It quickly becomes apparent that drinking and doing drugs weren't the only things getting her into trouble back in San Francisco. She makes a stunning admission to Simon on what her life was truly like back home, and suddenly people aren't seeing her as just a troublemaker. Lilly comes back to Hull to try and patch things up with her daughter, and winds up trying to do the same with Georgia as well. Georgia Rule is one of those movies that makes you think, feel, and laugh a little. There were quite a few times that the sassiness coming out of Rachel's mouth made me laugh out loud, such as when she wanted to shock the Hull locals and told Simon loudly as she was getting out of the car that she wanted her panties back when he was done with them. Yet it's the dysfunction that can soon be found throughout every generation of this family that made me feel and think, as she told Simon we all survive, but we don't all look so damn sad doing it. Despite the fact that the majority of us don't have that extreme dysfunction in our families that this family has, we all have a little bit. And if you can't see that watching the movie, you aren't looking close enough. Yuddy Score: A Yud -Laura Tucker
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