Release Date:  May 28, 2004
Rating:  PG-13 (for thematic issues involving teens)
Genre:  Comedy/Drama
Run Time: 90 minutes
Director:  Garry Marshall
Actors: Kate Hudson, John Corbett, Joan Cusack, Helen Mirren, Amber Valletta, Felicity Huffman, Hector Elizondo

Garry Marshall is a great director – when he gets the right script. Too bad that hasn’t happened with “Raising Helen.” 

Helen Harris (Kate Hudson) treats life like a party. With a glamorous job as a top New York modeling agent, she dances away her nights, enjoys one-night stands and doesn’t worry about the future. Then a tragic accident leaves her with custody of her sister’s three children. In addition to changing her lifestyle and learning to parent grieving children, Helen must also cope with the hurt and confusion of her older sister, Jenny (Joan Cusack), who was passed over as guardian. A pregnant mother of two, Jenny lacks Helen’s outgoing, fun-filled personality, so the sisters clash.

Marshall has a solid history as a writer, for “The Lucille Ball Show,” “The Dick Van Dyke Show” and “the Odd Couple,” among others. He created “Happy Days” and “Laverne & Shirley,” then went on to direct the recent “Runaway Bride” and “The Princess Diaries.” Too bad he didn’t pen this script, which is so formulaic I was worried my old math teacher might appear.

The dialogue has rare moments of creativity (“We are not bridge and tunnel people”) amid mostly bad ones (“Nobody ever said it would be easy”). The film moves slowly, with long stretches that have little or no action, yet the climax happens so quickly you almost miss it. Hudson has inherited her looks and mannerisms from gorgeous Goldie Hawn – but she has yet to develop her mother’s talent. She started off her career with a bang in “Almost Famous,” but went quickly downhill. In “Raising Helen,” she shows so little emotion that we just don’t sympathize with her plight. Marshall obviously understands this, because he pulls the camera up and away from her when he should be showing us her acting skills – at the very moment Helen learns of her sister’s death.

Cusack, on the other hand, has the skills, but seems adrift in her role. We keep hearing what a fabulous mother she is, but she’s every kid’s worst nightmare. Her best scene is at the motel, where she threatens the boyfriend, teaching him a little respect. Go, Soccer Mom!

This film contains lots of cigarette smoking (Helen chain-smokes), drinking, a nightclub scene, teens in a motel room, a handful of mild obscenities (including one from a child) and implied sex between Helen and a male model. She’s hardly the role model – even at the end of the film, after her “transformation.” She lies to a school principal, in front of the kids, insisting that they are Lutheran when they are not. She lies again to avoid blood tests. And, Pastor Dan (John Corbett), while mostly a strong Christian figure, makes the disturbing comment that Lutheran pastors are allowed to “date, marry and watch dirty movies,” then corrects himself, joking, “Well, not dirty movies – but we’re pushing for it.”