Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #11440 in DVD
• Released on: 2004-12-27
• Rating: Parental Guidance
• Format: PAL
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 114 minutes

Synopsis
Helen Harris (Kate Hudson) is a rising star in the New York City fashion world, just on the brink of being promoted to agent at a premiere modeling agency. The sudden death of her older sister (Felicity Huffman) and her brother-in-law shocks Helen from her exciting life of photo shoots, nightclubs, and hot dates. It brings her back to reality, a reality that includes custody of two nieces (ages 15 and five) and a 10-year-old nephew. Free-spirited Helen suddenly finds her life turned upside down. She is not only learning how to be a mother to three children, but she is also mourning the loss of her sister and brother-in-law, moving to a different borough, looking for a new career, and attracting the romantic interest of Pastor Dan (John Corbett), the principal of the kids' new Lutheran school. To complicate matters more, her surviving sister Jenny (Joan Cusack) is a Supermom in her own right who can't understand why their late sister entrusted carefree Helen with custody of the children. Garry Marshall (THE PRINCESS BRIDE, PRETTY WOMAN) directs this story about a woman who discovers what is really important when her life changes overnight.

Customer Reviews

GREAT! worth your money
A great infusion of romance and comedy. It shows kate in a great light. It handles the problem of three orpaned childern when their parents are killed in a car crash. A great family film or on a date.

A great film overall and worth every penny.

Heartwarming and Heartwrenching
This is a funny, heartwarming and sometimes heartwrenching tale that I think really gave Kate Hudson a chance to shine.

Helen Harris, a free-spirited, fun-loving and single fashion executive is enjoying being free-spirited, fun-loving and single in New York, with no plans of settling down and definately no plans of having children any time soon. Her only plan is to live life to the full but that is cut short.

Tragedy strikes when her older sister (and her husband) are killed in an accident, leaving three children without parents. Despite Helen isn't the best candidate (and her older living sister would be a better mother), she's given legal guardianship over the kids. Predictably, her whole life is thrown into a downward spiral.

No longer can she afford a chic apartment, nor can she find the time to work insane hours in fashion and her social life comes to a complete halt. Taking care of three kids proves not only physically exhausting, but mentally exhausting and heartwrenching; it all begins to take it's toll. No matter how hard Helen tries, she feels the pressure building that she will never be the perfect mother the kids need.

This film has it all - comedy, weepy bits, and a little romance thrown in for good measure. The supporting cast are great, and the acting of the youngest kid will blow you away.

Definately a film I'd recommend.

Decent Movie About Fun and Responsibility
However well "Raising Helen" did in the theaters is incidental. It isn't at the level of a movie worth rushing out to and putting down big cinema dollars. It is worth seeing once, if the price is right.

What's the plot?
A husband and wife pass away quickly as the movie starts. The woman's wish was that one of her sisters, Helen, take care of her three children. The conflict is in that Helen, now in charge, is the least likely of the two sisters. Other sister Jenny is much better at parenting, and has the goods to show for it. No argues this point, but this fact hardly changes how difficult this will make all lives involved.

What's the value?
When considering who should rear her children should she die, Helen's late sister looked at Jenny, her very motherly sister, with a brood of her own, and Helen, the fun-loving young woman. As she chose, she taught both sisters a lesson in parenting, and provided that her children, in the end, would be better off than had Jenny taken them as her own.

It is entertaining enough to watch, but stereotypical scenes and caricatured fashion designers, and a little too secular Lutheran priest (Pastor Dan) all take away from the reality of it all. It is rarely creative, but it is never terrible.

Pastor Dan (John Corbett) successfully show clergy are people too, but he does so at the cost of not being particularly spiritual.

Kate Hudson is adequate as the single girl Helen, but she could have been interchanged easily with Meg Ryan or a younger Daryl Hannah, or even Sandra Bullock. There is little special about Hudson here. Andi McDowell might have been a richer casting choice, providing more depth to Helen's character.

See the movie. You can let your children watch. Just don't go out of your way to do so.

Anthony Trendl