Labor Pains fails to rebirth Lohan’s career

Lindsay Lohan, the troubled star of Mean Girls, Freaky Friday and The Parent Trap, has suffered a setback in her latest attempt to get her ailing film career back on track.  Labor Pains, a romantic comedy which Variety described last year as Lohan’s chance to "regain her footing after recent personal troubles", has gone straight to cable in the US.

The film, which casts Lohan as a publishing assistant who pretends to be pregnant in a bid to save her job,  and co-stars Cheryl Hines of Curb Your Enthusiam as her best friend, will not be screened in any American cinemas. Instead, it will be shown on ABC's Family channel - after several mentions of "bullshit" have been edited out.
 
The 23-year-old actress, whose drink-driving escapades and on-off relationship with DJ Samantha Ronson are more likely to hit the headlines than her acting, had not had a lead role since Disney's 1995 film Herbie: Fully Loaded.

According to critics, it’s not surprising Labor Pains is skipping the cinemas. Lohan "teeters through scene after scene, announcing her lines in varying degrees of confusion (eyes wide) and exasperation (eyes wider)", writes Mary McNamara in the Los Angeles Times, noting that not even Cheryl Hines's role is "not large enough to serve as life raft for either the film or Lohan".
 
But while Lohan's career trajectory may have "plunged from rock bottom to six feet under" the demise of Labor Pains is not all her fault, according to New York magazine columnists The Fug Girls. "Lindsay's problem has never been lack of talent - just lack of judgment - and in fact, she's probably the best thing about the movie (except maybe the part where it ended and we turned it off). But she alone can't elevate a movie if the script is a dud." ·