The dubious message “Raising Helen” aims to deliver to all career-minded, fun-loving single gals is this: Your lives are unfulfilled and will remain that way until you forsake the rat race, land yourself a good man (a minister, perhaps?) and settle down to raise a brood of adorable moppets. To get Manhattan modeling-agent-to-be Helen Harris (Kate Hudson) from Point A to Point ZZZZZZZ in a hurry, schmaltz-meister Garry Marshall (“The Princess Diaries,” “Pretty Woman”) kills off her suburbanite sister and brother-inlaw, leaving our Goldie-locked wild child to raise their three kids. The contrived setup opens the door for Marshall to trot out virtually every hackneyed convention this threadbare genre has to offer, making sure his one-dimensional characters’emotional crises are unambiguous and neatly resolved. In the wake of a recent spate of similar slush — “Jersey Girl” and “Uptown Girls” come to mind — I offer this: Give it a rest, please.
Helen is a curious choice to have been willed the kids — 15-year-old Audrey (Hayden Panettiere); 10-year-old Henry (Spencer Breslin) and 5-year-old Sarah (Abigail Breslin) — given that (a) she’s living on an executive assistant’s salary in Manhattan, (b) she’s practically a kid herself and (c) the other surviving sister, Jenny (Joan Cusack), is a willing super-mom with a loving hubby and big old house. Ah, but Helen and her deceased sis had some sort of deep connection rooted, inexplicably, in Devo’s electro-pop hit “Whip It,” so — reason be damned — the kids are hers! Besides, though she can act circles around Hudson, Joan Cusack can’t open a movie. Even with the clunkers “How To Lose A Guy in 10 Days,” “Le Divorce” and “Alex & Emma” on her limited resume, the studios have yet to figure out that the reason Hudson was so good as the rock-star-lovin’ sweetheart in “Almost Famous” is that she was playing herself.
Meanwhile back at Point ZZZZZZZ, Helen has uprooted the kids from their provincial Jersey town and moved them to the mean streets of Queens. Although she’s lost her job at the agency, she enrolls her charges in an expensive private school run by a laid-back, handsome Lutheran pastor played by the perpetually laid-back and handsome John Corbett. Sparks fly, tears flow, kids ham it up at the zoo, Hector Elizondo appears. Beyond that, I don’t think I’ll be spoiling any big surprises by informing that there are no big surprises: Everything this by-the-numbers tear-jerker requires happens, conveniently does happen. And in the end, a domesticated Helen is as happy as Garry Marshall always wanted her to be. (Rated PG-13 for thematic issues involving teens. Running time: 119 minutes.)
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on May 28, 2004. Read the original PDF.