The girl is Lindsay Lohan, who plays an out-of-control 17-year-old named Rachel in Georgia Rule. Rebellious doesn't begin to describe the massively annoying, surly and narcissistic Rachel. Given the latest articles about Lohan's wild behavior, you wonder whether the role required much acting.

When she's not being a pathological liar, Rachel does try to be charming. While wreaking havoc in the lives of almost everyone she encounters, she takes a few seconds to quote Ezra Pound, identify a Bach sonata and somehow qualify for admission to Vassar.

We are supposed to believe that under her bad-girl posturing is a smart, sensitive and misunderstood teen. But nothing in this offensive, convoluted and clichéd movie convincingly portrays this.

During shooting, producer James G. Robinson wrote a now-famous memo excoriating Lohan for her unprofessional conduct, saying her actions "endangered the quality of the picture."

It's not clear if it was Lohan's diva antics or the wrongheaded story, but several things seem to have conspired to mar the film. You find yourself wishing Robinson had just called off the movie. That would have been a favor to reputable actors like Jane Fonda as stern Grandma Georgia, Felicity Huffman, who plays Lohan's weak, alcoholic mom, and Dermot Mulroney as a kindly town doctor. Huffman is oddly blank in much of the movie, but Fonda does her level best as Rachel's no-nonsense grandmother. You can almost see the resignation in her performance, as if she knows she's on a sinking ship.

Spoiled city girl Rachel is sent to live with her grandmother in a small Idaho town in the hope that it will straighten her out. Grandma has strict rules, but Rachel just wants to have fun and does so by insulting and taunting the local denizens, and threatening to sleep with all the boyfriends of the girls who get in her way.

The plot meanders and goes awry. For instance, would the strict Georgia send her free-spirited bombshell of a granddaughter to stay alone overnight with a middle-aged widower (Mulroney)?

Don't be fooled by the ad campaign. This is not an endearing Mother's Day movie. It tries to pass itself off as a film about feistiness, forgiveness and the bonds of motherhood. Instead, it deals lightly and inappropriately with promiscuity, alcoholism, drug abuse, grief and child molestation. Georgia Rule doesn't make you feel good; it makes you queasy.