BEFORE: Mother's Day is almost here, and I'm shutting down the Movie Year for a week because I'm headed down to North Carolina tomorrow, to see my own mother (and father) for the first time since October. It's fine, there are 365 days in a year and for me, only 300 of them need to be movie-watching days so there's no problem with abstaining for a week in May. I'm going to take another week off in June, just because the chain I landed on can't possibly fill the month, so right before Father's Day I'm going to be dark for another week. That's right around the time of the Tribeca Film Festival, so I'll probably be too busy anyway - these things have a funny way of working out, don't they?
Zachary Gordon carries over from "Because I Said So".
THE PLOT: A troubled young woman is sent to live with her grandmother for the summer, while hiding a secret that could potentially tear her family apart.
AFTER: This feels like it wanted to be a "message" film, but that message got so garbled and twisted over the course of two hours, that's it's difficult now to try to figure out what it was trying to say. A stepfather molesting his step-daughter is BAD? Well, sure, but we knew that going in. But when that step-daughter is so damaged by it that she can't have healthy relationships, that she lies about nearly everything, and she just keeps acting out, the end result is that we just don't know what end is up, and thus it becomes a bit difficult to assign blame for everything. We're dropped into the story at a point where her mother just can't deal with her any more and is handing her off to the girl's grandmother in Idaho, so what the hell am I supposed to do with that? She's just portrayed as difficult and over-sexed at first, and there's no explanation at first for WHY she's this way.
What's worse is that the only weapon in her arsenal seems to be seducing men, or even worse, getting close to father figures in her life, and there's kind of a fine line there. Look, I don't know much about abuse victims, but I'm not sure that a valid way of dealing with sexual abuse is to have random sex with everyone in sight, I would think that the opposite is true, that victims would be more likely to avoid sex, but what do I know? I'm not an expert, maybe if you look like LIndsay Lohan and all you have is a hammer, then everything just looks like a nail, if you know what I mean. This is Mental Health Awareness Month, and so I guess whatever somebody needs to do to be mentally healthy, we should encourage that.
Rachel hits this little town in Idaho, where her grandmother lives and where her mother grew up, and that town is just not ready for her. She tries to seduce the second man she meets, who gives her a ride into town, but she ends up dating the first man she meets, who found her lying by the side of the road. Well, it is a small town, but this all seems kind of ridiculous. That guy who gave her the ride used to date her mother, and he's a veterinarian and part-time doctor that she gets a summer job working for as a receptionist, it's all just a bit too insular if you ask me. Rachel's mother drops her off and then goes to meet friends in Salt Lake City, but then the bigger problem seems to be that she goes back to her husband, Rachel's step-father, who Rachel accuses of molesting her. Unless she's lying, of course, and that seems to be a definite possibility for part of the film. Unless she's also lying about lying, which presents us with something of a conundrum - how do we know if she made the whole thing up, and she freely admits that she's a habitual liar, unless she's also not telling the truth about THAT, and now my head hurts, we're in way too deep on this one.
Rachel's mother, Lilly, now is kind of caught in a dilemma, should she continue to go back to her husband, who claims he didn't have sex with her daughter, or should she believe her daughter, which means that her husband is a terrible person and her marriage is doomed to fail, and she may need to move back to Idaho herself, which she vowed she never would do. Meanwhile her daughter is trying to live under the moral code of her grandmother, which means never taking the Lord's name in vain, eating dinner every night at 6 pm sharp, and various other house rules. She's also dating this Mormon dude, who's got a girlfriend who's away at college and is also a virgin because it's what Jesus wants, but damn if he doesn't fall under Rachel's spell also.
We're going to go back and forth here a few times, because nothing's ever really easy in Idaho, I guess, but somewhere in here is a point, maybe, about how Grandma is always right, even if Mommy's to drunk to really understand what's going on. Well, at least we get two mothers in this film, so it's a Mother's Day double whammy perhaps. The most Mother-y of Mother's Day films, even. There are some great actors here like Hector Elizondo and Laurie Metcalf who are just criminally under-used because Jane Fonda and Felicity Huffman end up getting all the good scenes.
Ugh, I came here for Mother's Day and I got a whole bunch of other stuff I didn't need to deal with, like alcoholism and sex abuse, but OK, I guess. What else, maybe I can point out that Jane Fonda took 15 years off from being in movies, after making "Stanley & Iris" in 1990 she wasn't in another movie until 2005's "Monster-in-Law", then 2 years later she was in "Georgia Rule", so I guess if you're a big star you just can't retire whenever you want? Also I don't think most veterinarians would moonlight as country doctors, not even in Idaho - I'm guessing that even in Idaho they have hospitals and real doctors by now. But whatever.
Also starring Jane Fonda (last seen in "Stanley & Iris"), Lindsay Lohan (last seen in "The Bling Ring"), Felicity Huffman (last seen in "Trust Me"), Dermot Mulroney (last seen in "Lovely & Amazing"), Garrett Hedlund (last seen in "The United States vs. Billie Holiday"), Cary Elwes (last seen in "We Don't Belong Here"), Laurie Metcalf (last seen in "Scream 2"), Hector Elizondo (last seen in 'Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided to Go for It"), Dylan McLaughlin (last seen in "Kicking & Screaming"), Tereza Stanislav, Fred Applegate, Cynthia Ferrer, Destiney Moore, Christine Lakin (last seen in "Whatever It Takes"), Chelse Swain (last seen in "The Virgin Suicidies"), Shea Curry (last seen in "New Year's Eve"), Adreana Gonzalez (last seen in "Mother's Day"), Timothy Henning, Rance Howard (last seen in "Eulogy"). Hope Alexander-Willis, Paul Williams (last seen in "De Palma"), Beth Kennedy (last seen in "Race to Witch Mountain"), Sarah Lilly, Scott Marshall (last seen in "Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind"), Zettie M. Ronistal, Cat Stock, Sandra DeNise, Mandy Medlin, Lauren McLaughlin, Ash M. Warren, Katherine Helms, Anna A. White (last seen in "You Again"), Barbara Marshall (last seen in "Frankie and Johnny), Cassie Rowell, Lily Marshall-Fricker, Charlotte Marshall-Fricker, Nicole Appleby (last seen in "Quiz Lady")
RATING: 4 out of 10 kitchen knives
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