Raising Helen (Widescreen Edition)
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Actor: Hayden Panettiere, Joan Cusack, John Corbett, Kate Hudson, Spencer BreslinBrand: Buena Vista Home Video
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 5.1; Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1; French (Dubbed), Unknown
Format: AC-3, Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 119 minutes
Published: 2004-10-01
DVD Release Date: 2004-10-12
Audience Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Studio: Touchstone / Disney
DVD Reviews of Raising Helen (Widescreen Edition)
DVD Review: A good cast in a formula film that does not try to be great
Summary: 3 Stars
A movie that can put together Kate Hudson, Joan Cusack and Felicity Huffman as sisters is off to a good start, especially when you throw in John Corbett as the love interest along with Helen Mirren as the bad boss and Hector Elizondo as the good boss. But between the story by Patrick J. Clifton ("Son in Law") & Beth Rigazio and the script by Jack Amiel & Michael Begler (both for "The Prince and Me") what we end up with in "Raising Helen" is a formulaic film that never really tries to do anything different. Sadly, this has been pretty standard for Garry Marshall's recent movies.
Helen Harris (Hudson) is the youngest sister, a free spirit who works as the top assistant to the fashion model super agent, Dominique (Mirren). Jenny Portman (Cusack) is the middle sister, pregnant with her third child and a stickler when it comes to motherhood. The oldest sister, Lindsay Davis (Huffman), already has the three kids, and still finds it fun to have everybody dance to Devo's "Whip It" (while wearing the hats). You would think this would make Lindsay the sister in the middle, but this is not the case and eventually we find out there is a reason why these women are the way they are, a pretty important reason, one in which history can be said to be repeating itself in this film, but not one that anybody wants to explore for its richness or uniqueness.
As you know from the trailer for this film, Lindsay and her husband are killed in a car accident and while everybody expects custody of the Davis kids to go to Jenny, Helen is the surprise pick (I was going to say it had to be that way because otherwise there would not be a movie, but it suddenly occurs to me that there IS a movie going in the other direction and it could have been a much better movie than this one). Lindsay has left behind a pair of letters, one to each sister, explaining the decision, but those do not come into play for a while. That is because "Raising Helen" has to go through the steps of the formula here.
The premise is that Helen knows nothing about raising children and therefore is not fit to be a good mother, but in their time of grief she knows how to be compassionate while Jenny is concerned with being proper. The problem is not Helen, but her job, which requires her to work nights and other times when mommy duties are required, and it is just a matter of time until Helen gets cut loose. By that time she has moved into a new apartment in Queens to accommodate her instant family and enrolled the children in a Lutheran School run by the handsome Pastor Dan (Corbett). Helen's biggest flaw is not that she does not know how to be a mom, but that she apparently does not know of any theological differences between Lutherans and Catholics (or pastors and priests for that matter).
Helen's problem is that she needs to find a new job, while each of the kids has their own problem. Audrey (Hayden Panettiere), who had showed her fake ID to a proud Aunt Helen, is smitten with the bad boy at the school. Henry (Spencer Breslin) is on the school basketball team but does not want to play or even practice. Sarah (Abigail Breslin) gets upset trying to tie her schools and is waiting for her stuffed animal's parents to come back. Helen solves most of these problems, but the one she does not solve becomes the straw that breaks the camel's back.
Another point on the plus side is that Helen does get a job, as a receptionist for Mickey Massey (Elizondo), who runs a pre-owned car lot. A running gag is that Massey is trying to film a commercial for his business and they never quite work. You would think that Helen has found a home and will help Massey with his commercials, but you would be wrong. She does something else instead, and even that does not lead to anything. Now, my wife has been working as a finance officer at car dealerships for several years now and every place she has been at could have benefited from listening to her because she is smart as well as good looking, but they never do. So I was hoping that Helen would be able to do something intelligent along those lines, but that is apparently not part of the formula. But I have bigger complaints.
When we get to the big crisis in the movie the formula demands that Helen fail. But she should not have because you do not have to be a mother to know what mistake Audrey is making, you just have to have been a teenage girl at some point in your life. When Audrey declares that her life is being ruined by the action of her aunt, there are a whole bunch of obvious rejoinders that would have put her in her place. Then there is the bit with the credit card, which is used as a convenient plot device, but which is totally ignored in terms of being part of the resolution for the scene (how would Audrey feel if she learned it was now in the kid's wallet?). The formula overrides the opportunities to do something different that would make this movie work.
For me the final nail in the coffin is when we finally get to find out about the second letter. This is partly because I had my own idea as to what the letter said and I like it better than what they came up (my idea was that the kids were given to Helen as much for her sake as for that of the kids). But it is also because this movie really wants to reduce the pivotal character of Jenny to a mere caricature who has to be the "villain." When you learn the story of what happened to the mother of Helen, Jenny and Lindsay, it really throws all of the relationships between the characters into doubt (I can understand how it would have turned Jenny into who she was, but how would Helen have ended up like this?).
There is nothing wrong with the performances of any of the cast except for Cusak, and that is simply because of how badly written her character is for most of the film. One of the great supporting actresses of her generation, Cusak does overcome the limitations of her material towards the end of the film. But overall "Raising Helen" ignores all of the opportunities the storyline offers to just do it by the numbers. It was sad to see Marshall waste his good luck charm Eliozondo like this, and painful to watch the romance between Helen and Pastor Dan just spin its wheels for no good reason. This movie is still two rewrites away from being really good or at least having some memorable scenes despite the formula (it can be done: "The Family Man" is on television right now, proving the point).
Description of Raising Helen (Widescreen Edition)
Academy Award(R) nominee Kate Hudson (Best Supporting Actress, ALMOST FAMOUS, 2000; HOW TO LOSE A GUY IN 10 DAYS) lights up the screen with John Corbett (MY BIG FAT GREEK WEDDING) in this hit romantic comedy from the director of THE PRINCESS DIARIES and PRETTY WOMAN! Helen Harris (Hudson) has a glamorous, big-city life ... working for one of New York's hottest modeling agencies. But suddenly her free-spirited life gets turned upside down when she must chose between the life she?s always loved ... and the new loves of her life! Also starring Joan Cusack (IN & OUT), RAISING HELEN is a laugh-filled treat you're sure to fall in love with!Kate Hudson wrestles with unlikely motherhood in Raising Helen, a comedy directed with the smooth professionalism of Garry Marshall, the man who brought us such cinematic fairy tales as Pretty Woman and The Princess Diaries. Helen (Hudson, How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days) is an adorable hipster whose swift rise up the fashion industry ladder gets sideswiped when she finds herself responsible for raising three children, left in her care by the untimely death of one of her sisters. It's a standard frivolous-girl-grows-up story with an uneven script, but solidly performed by Hudson, John Corbett (My Big Fat Greek Wedding), ever-sexy Helen Mirren (Calendar Girls), and especially Joan Cusack (In and Out, Addams Family Values), who takes an obnoxious, uptight suburban mom and makes her the movie's emotional core. It's a miracle of acting alchemy; Cusack is one of contemporary comedy's most crucial performers. --Bret Fetzer
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