Just Add Water

Kate Hudson makes an instant mom, but what happens to the kids?

by Cindy Fuchs

With lyrics like "I am just your ordinary/ Average, everyday, sane, psycho/ Supergoddess," Liz Phair's "Extraordinary," currently scoring trailers for Raising Helen, is part pop, part angry-girl, part ironic, all attitude. As such, it's an odd choice for Garry Marshall's movie, which is anything but complicated, ironic or "extraordinary."

Like Kate Hudson's other recent choices (Alex and Emma, How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days), Helen is mostly formulaic. Her Helen is a fast-tracking assistant to the head of a New York modeling agency, the painfully named Dominique (Helen Mirren). Visiting her happily married sisters, Lindsay (Felicity Huffman) and Jenny (Joan Cusack), in New Jersey, Helen simultaneously inspires awe (in her sleek black minidress) and resentment (as she heads off for nightlife).

When, a few minutes later, Lindsay and her husband die in a car accident, their will reveals they've left their kids -- 14-year-old Audrey (Hayden Panettiere) and little cuties Henry (Spencer Breslin) and Sarah (Abigail Breslin) -- not to the obvious choice (Jenny, who has "the mom haircut"), but to Helen, apparently in need of "raising." Suddenly, she must be responsible, attend to the kids' schedules, meals and, as Sarah reminds her, nose boogers. Helen's initial efforts to maintain her previous life fall flat quickly, with set-piece business like Sarah causing chaos on a models' runway.

Predictably, Dominique sniffily dismisses her erstwhile golden girl's suggestion that she can handle these new distractions: "Fashion and family don't mix." In response, Helen throws herself into mothering, as she understands it, and -- shocking -- this leads straight to romance. Enrolling the kids in a Lutheran school, she catches the eye of the principal, Pastor Dan (John Corbett, essentially replaying his role from My Big Fat Greek Wedding).

With a new job as a receptionist, Helen gets her adult-ish life together, while still struggling to shape her parental role. She's immediately good with the 5-year-old, but her relationship with Audrey is increasingly troubled, as they share similar desires and lack of judgment. By Jenny's judgment, this dysfunction stems from Helen's inability to set boundaries. Indeed, when Helen comes home one evening to find a wild party in their apartment, she has no idea how to get the surly skater kids to leave. What to do, what to do? Call the baseball-bat-wielding neighbor lady, Nilma (Sakina Jaffrey), whose accented English and ready fury make her a tiresome cliche, a lesson in hysterical toughness for the wussy white girl.

More to the point is Jenny's ongoing grudge. Believing that she's the better parent, she essentially waits for Helen to fail, then offers to take the kids, as if it's some sort of triumph. None of the seeming grownups take responsibility for or actually counsel the children who are, by rights, traumatized and grieving over their parents' horribly sudden deaths. Not to mention that such distress is the premise for Helen's "personal growth" or a sugary romantic comedy. The inevitable happy ending lets Helen "have it all," but you might still be worrying about those kids.

RAISING HELEN Directed by Garry Marshall A Touchstone release Opens Friday at area theaters

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