Raising Helen (2004)

One of my all time favorites.

It's funny watching the elements come together in this complicated scam. On one hand, the set-up isn't quite as complex as it seems, but there's an easy sense of fun in every exchange.

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Helen Harris (Kate Hudson) is devoted to the single life and works for Dominique (Helen Mirren) at her modeling agency. Her sister Lindsay Davis (Felicity Huffman) lives the opposite life with three kids in New Jersey. When Lindsay and her husband die in a car accident, the cool aunt is forced to be the guardian to Audrey (Hayden Panettiere), Henry (Spencer Breslin) and Sarah (Abigail Breslin). The other sister Jenny Portman (Joan Cusack) considers herself the responsible one and is shocked that she's left out as the guardian. Helen is overwhelmed. Pastor Dan Parker (John Corbett) is the kids' new school principal.It's not that particularly hilarious. It's trying more towards touching. Killing off the parents early on will do that to a movie. The family is lovable. The kids are adorable. Kate Hudson is lovely. It's a family drama with enough light moments. The tough poignant moments are cliché but still work. It's a lovely cinematic family to root for. I rather not have the romance with the priest. It's problematic as a rom-com but the characters are still charming enough. Doesn't she have enough to deal with?

Here is another great Kate Hudson movie! She's darling; I love her smile, her sweetness and cute funniness she puts into her character. No wonder the kids fall totally in love with her and want her to raise them! Also, Pastor Dan was just awesome. Good looking, funny, and he was just perfect in the way he had the right balance of Pastor and gentleman! I loved two parts with him in the movie. One was when he said something about her giving him the Heisman! And, two, when he was telling Kate's character that he was a sexy God-loving man0something to that effect. That was just totally cute and I loved that-And her reaction was perfect to what he said. Just perfect I. I don't want to give away anymore, tho. I highly recommend this film. It's funny and beautiful.

It's a movie where the best of it is its double meaning title! It's not a bad movie; just an OK. I think big part of its problem (that didn't make it an "excellent" one) is that it didn't want to make comedy while it had all the capacities, it relayed on very easy solutions and recycled stuff (the storyline of the teen girl and the party reminded me of a too similar one, in the too similar movie, Uncle Buck !), and finally it lacked the surprises so much. So according to that the outcome was something between traditional and boring.Being unbelievably predictable isn't the tragedy here, we know the formula, and experienced it dozens of time before. But this movie couldn't make its material creative, its stalemates hard to solve, and its case effective. For instance there wasn't a good deal of problems around the lead. The teen girl forgave her utterly naively at the end. The boyfriend of (Paris Hilton) got an amputated storyline (most probably the movie makers forgot about him later ?!). And that lover priest didn't produce anything; comedy nor romance. His storyline was extremely blank. Obviously the movie doesn't score high, or actually score, when it comes to comedy or romance.The dialog was poor except for couple of lines I liked, however irrelevant to the main story, like "we don't sell used cars, we sell cars that had a previous owner", or "you're not a bad person, but what you did was very bad". I hated using big, real big, names like (Helen Mirren) and (Hector Elizondo) in trivial, rather cameos of roles. And it doesn't need an expert to know well that this is a (Joan Cusack) movie. Although, I'm not a fan of her (sometimes I can't just look at her !), but it takes a nut to not admitting that her character was the hardest, most attractive, one. And she nailed it, being the most memorable factor about this movie as a whole. In any case I prefer another not-a-kids-person-with-kids or from-ignorant-to-parent movies like (The Pacifier), or (Big Momma's House 2) both from the next year 2005; simply – while being average themselves – they did have some things to be watched more than (Raising Helen). Finally, it's kind of indolent movie, that doesn't want to be watchable enough, or know much about the situation it deals with. Yet can be used to spend 100 minutes with lovely cast, totally uncomplicated time, and (Kate Hudson)'s smile & chic clothes if you don't have any useful things to do!

I think the movie makes the mistake that its more cheerful and happy, instead of being dramatic. The core of the movie is its drama but this just doesn't work out fully due to the fact that everything around it is too cheerful and made in a comedy kind of style. The movie even finds room to put in a love-story, which is just a bit too much I'm afraid. The movie should had focused some more on the mourning and real problems, if the movie wanted to make a real lasting and effective impression. Instead now the problems in the movie are too trivial and don't seem significant enough, when considering 3 young children lost their parents and they're being raised by her aunt who definitely is an inexperienced one, as a 'parent'. You can say that the movie is too 'Hollywood' and therefor also becomes formulaic, standard and rather predictable.The movie is definitely well made for a 'comedy' and it has some great characters in it, that help to make the movie. There is a good balance of characters that are funny (although perhaps a bit too over-the-top) and characters that are serious. It's the thing that keeps the movie going and make it a pleasant one to watch.It's not like the story is really heading anywhere in the movie. Especially the middle of the movie is a sort of a drag, after a good and quite promising first minutes. Seemed like the movie wasn't too sure what direction to head in after that. It falls back to a lot of clichés to eventually of course also end in a clichéd and predictable way. The movie is perhaps also a bit too long. At least more then it really needed to be. Perhaps some side-plots should had been dropped.Amazingly the movie really has a big and superb cast, with actors such as Kate Hudson, Joan Cusack, Helen Mirren, Hector Elizondo and Felicity Huffman in it. But all the more great is the children-cast. Spencer Breslin and Abigail Breslin are two of the great child-actors of our time and in this movie they once more show why. And then there is Hayden Panettiere, who is a strange case. For her age she's great but I have doubts if people in 10 years from now still know who she is. If she wants to continue being taking seriously and show that she's up for the task, she needs to start taking some more serious roles fast, or else she continues being typecast over and over again, until eventually she is considered to be too old by Hollywood. She needs to stop doing these cheerful movies and cheerful roles. Even when her character is supposed to be mad she has something cheerful in her. She has the potential to become a great actress, if she can make the step to more serious and demanding roles NOW.I consider this to be a watchable movie, as long as you can handle most of the Hollywood clichés.6/10http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/