Kate Hudson gets to play bachelor mother as Helen Harris, a woman who is given guardianship of her late sister's three children in the heartwarming social/romantic comedy Raising Helen.
Suddenly Helen Harris, a hot-button career gal working behind the scenes at a top New York modeling agency (where Paris Hilton plays one of the models), finds her world turned upside down. She goes from partying all night to worrying whether 17-year-old Audrey is dallying with the wrong crowd, why Henry has suddenly lost interest in sports and whether little Sarah will ever learn to tie her shoelaces.
Stewing on the sidelines is her bossy, control-freak sister, Jenny (Joan Cusack), who views herself as the "perfect mother" and can't understand why her late sister has decided to give custody of her children to the flibbertigibbet Helen, whose mothering instincts are decidedly underdeveloped. "Can you imagine Helen taking care of three kids?" moans Jenny.
Helen is still a child at heart herself. Her favorite moment is doing a silly dance to Devo's "Whip It."
Director Garry Marshall relishes fuzzy stories such as his The Princess Diaries, Pretty Woman and Beaches in which pathos often mingles with comedy and inspiration. In Raising Helen he has all those ingredients, but happily doesn't let the sentiment get too mushy. He's helped immeasurably by the children -- Hayden Panettiere as Audrey and siblings Spencer and Abigail Breslin as the younger ones -- who don't try to be cute or precocious.
Audrey and the other older kids in Raising Helen have modern growing-up problems -- including underage sex and alcohol -- while Helen herself is torn between duty and the fizzy high life. Should she pass off the kids to Jenny and go back to her old job, or leave Manhattan, move to Queens and take the job at a used-car dealership? She's also torn about romance when a hunky Lutheran pastor (John Corbett), the principal of her children's school, takes an interest. "I'm a sexy man of God," he tells her.
Hudson and Corbett, who played the love interest in My Big Fat Greek Wedding, have a strong chemistry that sets their romance into motion and makes one want it to come true. They have a very funny scene in which she babbles on about the joys of Lutheranism, in hopes of persuading him to let her children enroll in his school. But this is no easy waltz. She's still unsure about what to do in a crisis and he's judgmental, traits that are like oil and water. Raising Helen doesn't always travel from A to B.
As mothering begins to play havoc with Helen's job -- and after little Sarah disrupts a fashion show -- Helen's coolly grande dame boss, Dominique (played by a deliciously waspy Helen Mirren), decrees that family and fashion simply don't mix. In one wonderful moment, Dominique looks askance at little Sarah as though she had just landed from another planet.
Helen tries to make a go of it, but then Henry's turtle dies and Audrey threatens to explore the world of the teenage tramp and Helen is really not sure she is up to the demands of instant motherhood. Along the way to Helen finding her real self and growing as a person, Hudson and Cusack share a powerful scene in which all the hurts of a lifetime are dredged up and dissected. It gets to the heart of their mutual misunderstanding and friction.
It would have been nice had Marshall tightened the film a little. Scenes with Hector Elizondo as a car dealer are amusing, but don't add much to the story. Yet despite a nearly two-hour running time, Raising Helen charms with warmth and family situations that often strike close to home.
***
Raising Helen
Starring: Kate Hudson, John Corbett, Joan Cusack, Hector Elizondo, Helen Mirren, Hayden Panettiere, Spencer Breslin, Abigail Breslin.
Rated: PG-13, contains profanity, adult themes.
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