Raising Helen Movie Review

For a movie that's being marketed as a carefree, fun Kate Hudson comedy, Raising Helen is awful damn serious. Stressful instead of sunny, grave instead of groovy, Helen walks the strange tightrope between happy comedy and angsty Lifetime movie, with all the accessories of a single gal farce married to the pious niceties of a not-quite-functional family drama. And with its TV-ready glow – all sexual contact is PG-rated, all violence is off-screen, and the homilies come fast and furious – Helen feels like someone dropped one of the women from Sex and the City into Everwood or some other faux-serious WB family drama. Thus despite the stab at high fashion and glamorous outfits, the movie ultimately gets mired in lots of talk about "feelings" and "what's good for the children" and "growing up" -- all that crap that you're loathe to deal with in real life and thus never want to see in an escapist movie.

And as sweet and charming as she tries to be, poor Kate Hudson is just a blonde stand-in, making you realize that a) she doesn't have the truly magnetic star quality of a Reese Witherspoon or Cameron Diaz; and b) How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days was much better written than you might remember. Hudson is of course the titular Helen, a happy-go-lucky girl in the big city with a dream job as the adored assistant of a high-powered modeling agency magnate (Helen Mirren) and a nightlife envied by that of her suburban sisters, Lindsay (Felicity Huffman) and Jenny (Joan Cusack), though Lindsay's envy is good-natured while Jenny's is stepped in resentment at Helen's lack of stability. Just how good-natured and how resentful is revealed after Lindsay and her blank of a husband are suddenly killed in a car crash: Helen has been entrusted with the care of their three children, while Jenny, a self-proclaimed supermom, is relegated to the sidelines, fuming and angry. Thus, Helen must move growing adolescent Audrey (Hayden Panettiere), chubby-but-adorable Henry (Spencer Breslin) and adorable-but-really-adorable Sarah (Abigail Breslin) into her studio walk-up in Manhattan and prove that she can, in fact, raise three children, despite no experience.

Now's about the time you would say "hijinks ensue" but instead, there is much more serious work afoot here. Showing a surprisingly clunky touch, director Garry Marshall, who shepherded hackneyed stories like Pretty Woman and The Princess Diaries through supreme makeovers they didn't quite deserve, swaths Helen in a stuffy coat of Oprah-style grieving and remedial parenting seminars. Eschewing any farcical set-ups aside from a slightly botched fashion show where everyone is appropriately sympathetic to Helen's plight (even her snooty boss), Marshall transplants his cutie-pie cast to the unglamorous streets of Queens and then gives each a Significant Obstacle they must overcome. Audrey's is her burgeoning sexuality and acting out; Henry's is his sudden disinterest in basketball; Sarah's is the angst of learning how to tie her shoes. Each one is pitched towards many "awwwwwww" moments dispensed in inverse proportion to their ages.

Helen, of course, is saddled with that burden that has been around since the Hallmark Hall of Fame began spitting out TV movies: Growing Up. Not only must Helen contend with the sudden mantle of Single Parenting, she also has to go through Getting a New Job, Moving from Manhattan, Acting Like a Mother, Tying Shoelaces for Crying Moppets, Surreptitiously Replacing Dead Pet Turtles and Stalking and Tracking Down Potentially Sexually Active Teenagers. It's as if somebody had crammed a whole season of Party of Five into two (very long) hours. Hudson bravely attempts to climb ev'ry mountain and conquer every adversity, but it's a long haul and it obviously wears on her. Even the requisite romance Marshall tosses at her, in which she's paired with My Big Fat Greek Wedding milquetoast John Corbett (who, it must be said, does as well as anyone could with a character constantly referred to as "Pastor Dan"), is only half-hearted. Then again, you might have trouble warming up to a pastor whose idea of a great date is an intra-religious amateur hockey game (rabbis vs. priests!) and a trip-to-the-zoo montage set to (I kid you not) Simon and Garfunkel's "At the Zoo." Still, once in a while Hudson hauls out her mother's smile, crinkles her nose and all's forgiven for about ten seconds until the plots grinds into gear again.

Surprisingly, Marshall thrusts all the weight of the movie on his leading lady's fragile shoulders, even though once again he's assembled a stellar supporting cast, though he puts them to either minimal or very awkward use. The usually flawless Cusack is sorely miscast as one drudge of a sister and is asked to bury her natural comic flair under a bad haircut and a litany of harangues that seem designed to scare anyone out of her presence. Faring a bit better are Mirren, who turns a caricature of a haughty Anna Wintour-style Manhattan lizard-bitch into something resembling a warm-blooded mammal, and Marshall's ubiquitous pinch hitter, an uncredited Hector Elizondo, whose warm, unforced humor uplifts his handful of scenes as a used car salesman with the unlikely name of Mickey Massey. His few appearances are a nice respite from a movie that would rather content itself with wallowing in mopey seriousness; Depressing Helen is more like it.