Georgia Rule

Movies that grapple with the subject of intergenerational conflict create a marketing problem: who is the the target audience? Only one of the generations represented, or all three? When the people making the trailer can’t (or won’t) make a decision, you end up with a trailer that makes you feel like you just swallowed one of those Asian snacks that has sugar on the outside and meat on the inside.

Older viewers (and Southerners) may, for a few seconds, be intrigued by the overbearing folksiness of the Jane Fonda character. Younger viewers (and viewers of other ages who are pleased to finally see her in an overtly sexual role) may begin to hesitantly pump a fist in the air as Lindsay Lohan attempts to fight the shackles of grandmatriarchal oppression. Middle-aged viewers may have time to wonder why Felicity Huffman really isn’t in the trailer that much. And then the trailer changes gears, or ends, and we’re all left with a vague sense that the next time we learn about these characters, it will be seven years from now, at 4:03 am when we’re strung out, bleary-eyed, and surfing channels.

Buried in there somewhere is probably a story about learning to accept your place in life – the grandmother gives up on her stupid rules, the granddaughter gives into the stupid rules, the mother deals with some subplot that explains why she and the granddaughter are living with the grandmother to begin with. And we find out the true origin of "Georgia rule," and it’s some secret from the grandmother’s past which ties inexorably into whatever is going on with Lindsay Lohan and those fundy girls who go around calling her names.

Either that, or it’s a complete mess that makes no sense, but has Lindsay Lohan in it, getting sprayed down by a hose while wearing a white t-shirt. More generous would-be-viewers may convince themselves that there’s subtext implied by the casting of the person doing the spraying.

Georgia Rule trailer