Raising Helen
It's hard to hate "Raising Helen," but you may be tempted to try. The tale of a spoiled Manhattan princess who inherits her late sister's three children and becomes a better person through motherhood, the film boils down every feel-good chick-flick cliche of the last 15 years into a lumpy mass of multiplex comfort food. Directed by Garry Marshall, it's like last year's "Uptown Girls" without the edge, and as such I heartily recommend it to people seeking a movie to tell them things they already know without taxing their brains.
Helen Harris (Kate Hudson) is the youngest of three sisters and the one with a fairy tale life in the big city: by day a rising star at a modeling agency run by Dominique (Helen Mirren, wearing a wig that doesn't disguise her as much as she might wish), and by night a club-hopping hedonist.
This lovely life comes screeching to a halt when middle sister Lindsay (Felicity Huffman) and her husband are killed in a car crash, leaving behind teen rebel Audrey (Hayden Panettiere), portly 'tweener wiseacre Henry (Spencer Breslin), and li'l cutie Sarah (Abigail Breslin). To the dismay of oldest sister Jenny (Joan Cusack), a tightly wound New Jersey supermom, Helen is awarded custody, and the four set up house together.
First, though, the movie has to knock Helen off her single-gal pedestal and show her how the rest of the world lives: apartment, love life, and job are quickly lost to the demands of the new family. She relocates to a Queens walk-up, gets a job as the receptionist at a used-car lot run by Marshall regular Hector Elizondo, and enrolls the kids at a neighborhood parochial school. Since attractive white lead characters in Hollywood comedies can't be validated as "real" unless they're befriended by lovable ethnic types, Helen soon makes friends with feisty neighbor Nilma (Sakina Jaffrey) and the domino-playing guys outside her apartment house. I don't know about you, but someday I'd like to see a movie about Nilma.
The one group "Raising Helen" seems terrified by is inner-city blacks, and hip-hop nation in general: Audrey's flirtation with a homeboy named BZ (Michael Esparza) is played with lock-up-your-daughters panic. The film's heart is in that parochial school, and its most shameless bid for approval is the appearance of Pastor Dan, the handsome Lutheran prelate who runs St. Barbara's and who becomes Helen's love interest. I'm all for positive clerical role models in the movies, but does Pastor Dan have to be played by John Corbett, the decaf-latte himbo of "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" and "Sex and the City," and does he really have to say "I'm a sexy man of God, and I know it"?
Still, that's not half the hatchet job "Raising Helen" does to Cusack, one of our best working comic actresses, who here is reduced to a two-dimensional shrew. Jenny's supposed to represent anal-retentive momhood run amok, and the script only lets her be human after it puts her down for an hour and a half.
The kids are good, though, and Hudson is pleasant, even if she lacks her mother Goldie Hawn's gooney-bird spark. You're thankful for the small favors in "Raising Helen" -- the way it gets the required "dance around the living room to the oldie" scene out of the way early or the unexpected comedy of an all-clergy hockey game. Still, shouldn't a movie that deals with the death of parents dig a little deeper into real pain, real grief, real emotion before tidying up the room in time for the end credits? "Helen" works so hard to be inoffensive that you may well be offended.
Video
