JANE FONDA - MOVIE REVIEWS: GEORGIA RULE

MOVIE REVIEWS: GEORGIA RULE

With Garry Marshall directing, Jane Fonda playing the role of an Idaho matriarch, and Lindsay Lohan and Felicity Huffman as her granddaughter and daughter, you'd probably expect a howling comedy when you pick up your tickets at the box office for Georgia Rule. But critics are cautioning moviegoers that the film is not what you'd expect. Kyle Smith in his review in the New York Post posts this warning: "Do not take your mom to Georgia Rule unless she's Roseanne Barr. You may expect a three-generational chick flick, but what you get is a child-rape comedy." Lael Loewenstein observes in the Los Angeles Times: "Weighted down by too much disturbing material to work as a glossy, lighthearted comedy, yet dappled with too many broad comic moments to stand as a serious film, Georgia Rule oscillates clumsily from shock to slapstick to schmaltz. The result of these big tonal swings is a cinematic strikeout." Peter Howell in the Toronto Star accuses Marshall of being "deaf to the dark tone of his film." "This movie is neither a standard weepie nor a comforting dramedy," writes A.O. Scott in the New York Times. "It's an interesting, maddening mess -- not a terrible movie, and by no means a dull one." Ty Burr of the Boston Globe would obviously think that Scott is being too kind. He calls it "a bad idea dreadfully executed." But many critics wonder about Jane Fonda's recent choice of film projects. Writes Eleanor Ringel Gillespie in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, "If, as Fonda has said, she's ready to return to acting, I wish she'd return to acting."


11/05/2007