RAISING HELEN
[] (two stars)
Mediocre star vehicle. Running time: 114 minutes. Rated PG-13 (nothing offensive). At the AMC Empire 25, Loews Lincoln Square, Clearview Chelsea, others.
THE folks who marketed “Raising Helen” had so little faith in its content that their posters showcased Kate Hudson’s pert backside and sunny smile without giving any hint whatsoever about the film’s genre or plot.
Nevertheless, director Garry Marshall’s addition to the tiresome Hollywood trope of carefree-single-person-transformed-by-the-cutely-comic-experience-of-parenthood isn’t quite as bad as you might expect.
Yes, it has several excruciating sequences including one gag-inducer in which Kate Hudson’s extended family indulge in one of those loathesome movieland spontaneous dance outbreaks (to Devo’s “Whip It” no less).
And the filmmakers seem to have uncritically bought the Hollywood notion that what’s interesting about childrearing, if you can’t pay someone else to do it for you, is how it can help you grow as a person.
But “Raising Helen” doesn’t press all its obvious lessons, and there are actually a few surprises – and even a couple of moving and interesting moments – before an all too predictable resolution.
It’s as if one of the film’s four writers had ambitions beyond sitcom hackery and hoped to write something connected to human reality.
In the end, it isn’t saccharine sentimentality or predictability that pulls “Raising Helen” down, it’s the way the film can’t decide whether it’s a romance, a fish-out- of-water flick, a teen-parent conflict story, or a tale of sibling rivalry and reconciliation, and therefore fails at each.
Hudson plays Helen, a twentysomething Manhattan party girl who works as an assistant to Dominique (Helen Mirren, always a pleasure) the owner of a top modeling agency. Her two older sisters, Jenny (Joan Cusack, in uptight mode again) and Lindsay (Felicity Huffman) are both married with children and live in suburban New Jersey.
When Lindsay and her husband die in a car-wreck, their will entrusts their three children – 15-year-old Audrey (Hayden Panettiere), 10-year-old Henry (Spencer Breslin) and 5-year-old Sarah (Abigail Breslin), not to miserable, hyperdomestic Jenny but to Helen.
There isn’t enough room for three kids so Helen moves to Queens (gasp) and a building full of lovable old people and charming immigrants.
Lacking common sense, she brings the kids to work with her. The result is several disasters and Helen duly loses her job. Through friendly neighbor Nilma (Sakina Jaffrey), she finds a new gig at a used car-lot and then gets the kids into a Lutheran school run by handsome Pastor Dan (John Corbett, painfully bland in an underwritten part).
But all three kids start manifesting serious emotional problems, and the film wants to show that Helen hasn’t grown up enough to really be a good parent.
It’s all a bit vague and confused, but the idea seems to be that if only she could have a good chat with two of them and discipline the third, everything would come together, but before she can do that she’s forced to ask her bossy sister to help.
Paris Hilton, the celebutante-turned-porn star, appears as herself in a couple of fashion show and restaurant scenes (her lines seem dubbed).
Hudson’s a real movie star with enough presence and likeability to make “Raising Helen” watchable, but once again she’s chosen material that ensures that the golden promise of “Almost Famous” remains unfilled.
She also shares no chemistry with Corbett.
Everyone in the film is too thin, especially Joan Cusack, who looks as if she’s just recovered from some botched cosmetic surgery.