If you expect director Garry Marshall ('Pretty Woman', 'The Princess Diaries') to deliver another fairytale comedy with 'Georgia Rules', you will be sorely disappointed. Stuck somewhere between a comedy and a melodrama, this intergenerational family saga fails dismally at both.

Rachel (Lindsay Lohan) is a rebellious, promiscuous teen, whose drug-taking, lies and out-of-control behaviour has led her mother Lilly (Felicity Huffman) and stepfather Arnold (Cary Elwes) to send her to a small town in Idaho to live with her strict grandmother Georgia (Jane Fonda) for the summer.

The estranged gran, who has not seen her daughter or Rachel for 13 years, has a strict set of rules ("Georgia rules", of course) by which she lives her life. Aside from the fairly straightforward ones (wash the dishes, supper at six, no taking the Lord's name in vain), granny Georgia is actually fairly innocuous and one has trouble believing that her behaviour caused a lifetime of alcohol addiction in her own daughter.

After an initial clash of wills, Rachel and Georgia get on like a house on fire. Rachel accepts her job at the local vet/doctor Simon (Dermot Mulroney), a father figure who she unsuccessfully attempts to seduce. But when she does seduce the town hunk, Harlon (Garrett Hedlund) who is destined to become a missionary, she's vilified by the town’s Mormon community.

Everything is hunky-dory until Rachel casually drops a bombshell. Then she recants the claim. Then she recants the recantation. It's all so confusing.

Distraught Lilly doesn't believe Rachel's 'lies', but she returns to see her mother and daughter anyway and the messy relationships between the three women are forced into the open as each one battles with their own demons.

The screenplay by Mark Andrus ('As Good As It Gets') is sub-standard and although there are a few funny moments, they are incongruous with the rest of the film. At its best, the movie succeeds in making you feel extraordinarily uncomfortable.

Lindsay Lohan (who was criticised for her "unprofessional" behaviour during the making of the film) actually puts in a rather commendable performance, as do Huffman and Fonda. However, the performances are only good when considered on their own. The characters don't work particularly well together, and one can’t help but think that Marshall has done a rather poor job with a rather formulaic screenplay.