Release Date: May 28, 2004
Starring: Kate Hudson, John Corbett, Joan Cusack, Hayden Panettiere, Abigail Breslin, Spencer Breslin
Directed by: Garry Marshall
Written by: Jack Amiel, Michael Begler
Distributed by: Buena Vista Pictures
MPAA Rating: PG-13 (thematic issues involving teens)
Advance “praise” for Raising Helen advertised that famed romantic comedy director Garry Marshall had done it again. If you’re keeping in mind trite work like The Other Sister and Dear God, then, yes, he’s done it again, because this is as bland as “feel-good” dramas come. It offers absolutely nothing new to its genre, not a single quirky character or interesting plot angle. Almost everything about it is so cheaply contrived that it’s not only a dull moviegoing experience, it’s practically insulting.
It doesn’t help when your lead is as horribly overrated as Kate Hudson, an attractive actress who has fallen into a string of forgettable romantic comedies like Alex & Emma and How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days; she still has yet to come close the talent she so wonderfully displayed in 2000’s Almost Famous. She has somehow become a contender for the crown of Hollywood’s new romantic comedy queen, despite having never done anything legitimate to deserve the label, and the empty Raising Helen crystallizes this title run. But it’s just as obvious that she doesn’t belong in lead roles.
Hudson plays the title character, Helen Harris, an ambitious single woman in the fashion business who is seen as the “cool” aunt by her two nieces and one nephew (played by Hayden Panettiere, Abigail Breslin, and Spencer Breslin, respectively). Helen is the family member who doesn’t care if you sneak out to smoke or have a fake ID -- and even encourages such behavior, in a relatively harmless sort of way. Basically, she’s an irresponsible parental figure and not entirely respected by one of her own two sisters (Joan Cusack). So it’s a bit of a shock when the children’s parents die in a car accident and Helen is made their legal guardian.
The reasons for this are confusing and kept secret until the end, though mostly because there wouldn’t be a movie otherwise. There would be no way for Helen to fall into the overwhelming responsibility of balancing her precious career with caring for the children. And then there would be no way for the movie and its main character to undergo the highly predictable transformation from immaturity to maturity. Of course, the reason the deceased parents left the children with Helen is the purpose of the movie itself -- to force Helen to grow up. But it’s so terribly obvious, and the accompanying story is so stale and poorly acted that the film would have been better off ending after about 20 minutes.
Instead, we have to sit through forced moments of cutesy child-adult interaction that involve everything from kids saying things like, “Who’s going to check my nose boogies for infections?”, a dead pet turtle being replaced on the sly, a goofy mother neighbor who regulates for Helen with a metal bat, and a fashion show that Helen’s kids unfailingly crash. There’s nothing funny about these scenes, and if it weren’t for the kids’ faces sometimes, there would be absolutely nothing cute about them either. The fashion show scene in particular, which has models losing their balance and the kids themselves mistakenly on display in their pajamas, is just as boring and unfunny as it was when it became the climax of the movie’s advertisements. The scene’s punchline -- a security guard saying, “We have a model down!”, as though he were a Secret Service bodyguard -- still falls incredibly flat.
Worse are the scenes in which Helen and the kids endure the emotional trials of the story. After their parents have died and they refuse to appear during the wake, they sit in a walk-in closet with sad faces as fake as a group of kids pretending they’re truly hurt their mom won’t give them candy. The youngest one, of course, gets to deliver the heart-tugging line, “The closet smells like mommy,” but the set-up is so unconvincing and obviously manipulative that it shouldn’t draw any emotional response from the audience. Garry Marshall might as well have added subtitles to these scenes that tell us what specific feelings we should be having. That, at least, would have been funny.
It would be foolish not to mention the obligatory romantic subplot, which involves a school pastor played by John Corbett. He’s a kind and good humored gentlemen who tries to woo Helen, but befitting of the movie’s insistence to include every romantic comedy formula in the book, she can’t seem to make things right with him. It’s not as emotionally numb as the rest of the story, but in the end the only reason for it being there is to add one last touch to the obvious happily-ever-after ending.
So, yes, Garry Marshall has done it again, and even worse than before. Raising Helen will entertain a select group of people, mostly those who have become desensitized to these rigid, mechanical, overly familiar studio movies. Otherwise, it will be totally forgotten, only to make way for the next one like it.
-- Andy Zientek (zfilm@earthlink.net)