Wild child

If you’re one of those moviegoers who turn up their nose at typical Hollywood movies, Georgia Rule is not for you. Yet if it were a little better, it could earn itself a place in Hollywood folklore. It certainly has billboard appeal, starring two-time Oscar-winner Jane Fonda (Klute and Coming Home), Oscar nominee Felicity Huffman (Transamerica) and a publicity-grabbing wild child Lindsay Lohan.

This is the movie where Lohan famously earned herself an admonitory letter from the studio CEO, who threatened to sue her for repeatedly holding up production with what seems in retrospect to have been a very public meltdown. It doesn’t appear to have harmed her performance -“ she’s pretty good in the central role of this comedy drama from director Garry Marshall (Pretty Woman) and writer Mark Andrus (As Good As It Gets).

The women play three generations of a dysfunctional family. Huffman is the alcoholic wife of a rich California lawyer who drives her daughter Lohan to Idaho for the summer hoping that spending a month or so with her strict and uncompromising grandmother Fonda will straighten her out. Huffman is so alienated from Fonda that she can’t spend even one night under her roof, heading back to California and disappearing from the movie for a while.

Lohan promptly seduces teenage Mormon hunk Garrett Hedlund with a blowjob in a rowing boat while they’re out fishing. Meanwhile, Fonda has a job lined up for her, filling in as receptionist for the local vet, nicely played by Dermot Mulroney, who is still in grief for the wife and child he lost three years earlier in an accident. Lohan advises her boss to get on with his life -“ and here comes the jaw-dropping scene -“ in the same way she did after her stepfather (Cary Elwes, the hero from The Princess Bride) started having sex with her when she was just 12 years old.

This just about blows the comedy out of the water, and brings Mother Huffman hurtling back to Idaho and another alcoholic binge. But was Lohan lying? Only Grandma Fonda knows -“ she can spot a lie from a mile off. The audience, however, spends the next hour or so figuring it out.

It’s a wildly uneven movie, but never dull. The issues involved with incest and pedophilia are given due consideration (just remember this is the director who made prostitution palatable in Pretty Woman) and the plotlines are tied up fairly satisfactorily.

And now a word just for those gay males whose interest in Garrett Hedlund (pictured with Lohan) is the main reason to see this movie. He was Brad Pitt’s hot cousin -“ and lover -“ in Troy; had an action role as Mark Wahlberg’s brother in Four Brothers; gave a moving performance as an emotionally abused high school football player in Friday Night Lights; then made the mistake of allowing his hair to be dyed black for a nothing role in Eragon. In Georgia Rule, his hair acts everybody else off the screen. Nice work.