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List Price: $14.99 | | Label: Touchstone / Disney
Salesrank: 17671
Released: October 12, 2004 |
| Our Price: $6.71 |
| Used Price: $1.74 |
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MPAA Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
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!
Description of Raising Helen (Full Screen Edition):
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
Raising Helen (Full Screen Edition) Reviews:
Sexist pronatist garbage 
2008-08-30 - A previous reviewer noted that the deceased sister wished to teach Helen 'a lesson in parenting.'
This idea has stuck with me because of the unspoken corellary that a young footloose sucessful career woman NEEDS to have a 'lesson in parenting' because being a mother is the be all and end all for ALL women.
The assumption is that all women need and want children, and will have them, and that all of us who do NOT are just fooling ourselves and need a sitcom-like twist to show us the error of our ways.
Why does Helen 'need' a lesson in parenting if the unspoken assumption is NOT that she needs and wants (or will need and want) to have children, merely by virtue of being a woman?
I have seen synopsises of this movie which say that Helen is 'forced to grow up'.
Gee - having a high paced career that you love, being financially independant and responsible, owning your own place, having your own money, paying all your bills on time - NONE of those things means that a woman is a 'grown up'. NO! The only way a woman could POSSIBLY be an adult is if she is maternal and has children. Everything else is just dress up. As a childfree ADULT woman with no maternal instinct whatsoever, I find this mindset DISGUSTING.
A Bit Sacharine 
2008-06-01 - Everything is a little too cute and sweet and wholesome. My teeth ache from watching: three orphans, their cute aunt try to raise them, while dating an impossibly wholesome minister. oi-vey!
Still, i DID watch the whole thing, so that's saying something.
"Lorenzo" Not Included.
2008-05-12 - The oscar nominated animated short film "Lorenzo", which was screened with Raising Helen in theatres and was originally announced as a part of this DVD release, is not included in the DVD. If you are interested in this DVD simply for Lorenzo please be advised. I hope this was helpful to some and at least informative to others.
Such an obnoxious movie for Smith and Vassar girls to adore 
2008-05-12 - Oh how sooooooooooooo overally dramatic and pathetic, the sad tension and overacting is so tiring, it was so painful to endure each moment of the film. Love Kate Hudson, but she simply was unbearably blonde and grotesquely stereotypical of her role that is really quite unengaging. Joan Cusack is brilliant as always, but this is just so boring and useless and pointless and there is nothing remotely funny about the movie in any fashion. Cusack's asking Kate for the shell plates or whatever the case may be, while grieving was kind of hilarious, but that Cusack being spot on perfect with her deadpan ways.
I didn't care about any of the characters. I wanted the boring kids to all get mauled by someone in suburbia with a chainsaw, and was wishiing most of the really decent actors in the film were met by a hit and runner on Reservation Road.
I just will never forget Kate's role as Penny Lane. She was made for that part. This is just unbearable and tastlessly showy.
Surprisingly good 
2008-04-06 - I was laid up with the flu and not in the mood for serious thinking so I selected this obviously lightweight romantic comedy mostly for the cast. I love Kate Hudson and John Corbett. When I realized it was directed by Garry Marshall I got a little depressed as I find his movies so formulaic and superficial that I feared for the worst.
However the story was really not so bad and the cast is quite wonderful. Hudson, like her famous mother, lights up every frame she's in and that alone was medicine for my flu. John Corbett who I fell in love with in Northern Exposure was a bit of a disappointment. Maybe it was his hair--it looked thin and dyed. Or maybe he felt hamstrung by trying to play a "sexy man of God." I winced at that line. However he holds his own and Hudson has enough charm and energy for two. Joan Cusack is very good as the uptight older sister, whom we're supposed to dislike. In the end each sister gets a bit of the other's traits and everyone seems to live happilly ever after.
The supporting cast is excellent, too. Helen Mirren, previewing Meryl Streep as the head of a modelling agency, is never bad. The fellow who plays the used car salesman is wonderful. The children are all good, which is not always the case in these Hollywood films. Abigail Breslin is so natural that you just want to hug her. Her brother is quite good, too. I especially enjoyed the Indian neighbor who chased the teenagers out of Hudson's apartment with a baseball bat, scolding them for having baggy pants!
Like several others, I wish that Kate Hudson would play some more serious roles that expand her talent. Perhaps being so adorable is a trap as she is so good at it that she keeps getting these roles.
I found the "extras" featuring out takes hosted by Garry Marshal interesting in the sense that it really shows his heart. He's a nice man, who wants people to be happy. He even wanted to leave in a scene featuring a daycare center at the workplace because he believes in the concept. It gave me a new respect for him. Also he's an old pro. He knows how to put a film together for popular consumption and he did it.
If you're looking for Bergman, as another reviewer here was, you'll have plenty of reason to complain. But if you take the film for what it is intended to be--a light entertainment with some good themes, then you'll probably enjoy it.
