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Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
64
Appaloosa
69
Ashes of Time Redux
68
August Evening
54
Battle in Seattle
76
Betrayal - Nerakhoon, The
67
Black Balloon, The
55
Boy in the Striped Pajamas, The
50
Breakfast with Scot
63
Changeling
47
Choke
84
Christmas Tale, A
41
Cthulhu
81
Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father
xx
Dostana
62
Duchess, The
46
Dukes, The
63
Eden
xx
Extreme Movie
69
Fear(s) of the Dark
26
Filth and Wisdom
28
Fireproof
73
Frost/Nixon
82
Frozen River
43
Gardens of the Night
73
Girl Cut in Two, A
54
Good Dick
30
Guitar, The
84
Happy-Go-Lucky
31
Hounddog
26
House of the Sleeping Beauties
47
How About You
68
Hunger
72
I Served the King of England
70
I.O.U.S. A
40
Igor
78
I've Loved You So Long
63
JCVD
27
Lake City
82
Let the Right One In
xx
Let Them Chirp Awhile
xx
Local Color
89
Man on Wire
84
Momma's Man
51
Morning Light
34
My Name Is Bruce
xx
Nobel Son
40
Other End of the Line, The
34
Otto; or Up with Dead People
75
Pool, The
77
Pray the Devil Back to Hell
82
Rachel Getting Married
56
Religulous
32
Repo! The Genetic Opera
53
RocknRolla
57
Sixty Six
85
Slumdog Millionaire
57
Special
79
Stranded: I Have Come from a Plane That Crashed on the Mountains
67
Synecdoche, New York
82
Tell No One
83
Trouble the Water
43
Tru Loved
83
U2 3D
59
We Are Wizards
55
What Just Happened?
89
Man on Wire
85
Slumdog Millionaire
84
Momma's Man
84
Christmas Tale, A
84
Happy-Go-Lucky
83
Trouble the Water
83
U2 3D
82
Tell No One
82
Rachel Getting Married
82
Frozen River
82
Let the Right One In
81
Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father
79
Stranded: I Have Come from a Plane That Crashed on the Mountains
78
I've Loved You So Long
77
Pray the Devil Back to Hell
76
Betrayal - Nerakhoon, The
75
Pool, The
73
Girl Cut in Two, A
73
Frost/Nixon
72
I Served the King of England
70
I.O.U.S. A
69
Ashes of Time Redux
69
Fear(s) of the Dark
68
August Evening
68
Hunger
67
Black Balloon, The
67
Synecdoche, New York
64
Appaloosa
63
JCVD
63
Eden
63
Changeling
62
Duchess, The
59
We Are Wizards
57
Special
57
Sixty Six
56
Religulous
55
Boy in the Striped Pajamas, The
55
What Just Happened?
54
Battle in Seattle
54
Good Dick
53
RocknRolla
51
Morning Light
50
Breakfast with Scot
47
How About You
47
Choke
46
Dukes, The
43
Tru Loved
43
Gardens of the Night
41
Cthulhu
40
Igor
40
Other End of the Line, The
34
My Name Is Bruce
34
Otto; or Up with Dead People
32
Repo! The Genetic Opera
31
Hounddog
30
Guitar, The
28
Fireproof
27
Lake City
26
House of the Sleeping Beauties
26
Filth and Wisdom
xx
Dostana
xx
Let Them Chirp Awhile
xx
Local Color
xx
Nobel Son
xx
Extreme Movie
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
|
Raising Helen
Touchstone Pictures
FILM:
MPAA RATING: PG-13 for thematic issues involving teens
Starring
Kate Hudson,
John Corbett,
Joan Cusack,
Hayden Panettiere,
Spencer Breslin,
Abigail Breslin,
Helen Mirren,
and
Felicity Huffman
Helen Harris's carefree lifestyle comes to a screeching halt when she learns that she is now responsible for her sister's three children. She comes to realize that the choice she has to make is between the life she's always loved and the new loves of her life. (Touchstone Pictures)
| GENRE(S): |
Comedy
|
Drama
|
Romance
|
| WRITTEN BY: |
Jack Amiel
Michael Begler
Patrick J. Clifton (story)
Bethany Rigazio (story)
|
| DIRECTED BY: |
Garry Marshall
|
| RELEASE DATE: |
DVD: October 12, 2004
Video: October 12, 2004
Theatrical: May 26, 2004
|
| RUNNING TIME: |
119 minutes, Color |
| ORIGIN: |
USA |
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
70
The Hollywood Reporter
Sheri Linden
Marshall's predilection for romantic fairy tales is much in evidence, though the comedy registers in a lower key than it did in such hits as "Pretty Woman" and "Runaway Bride."
67
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
William Arnold
A slick and entertaining package.
63
Miami Herald
Peter Debruge
There's an old-school innocence to Marshall's style, and it's satisfying to be whisked away from reality to this parallel universe where we find it possible to laugh amid such a fundamentally tragic scenario.
63
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
Rick Groen
The actors are all better than the material, just as the script's occasionally amusing tangents are far superior to its mundane narrative arc.
60
Variety
Joe Leydon
An undemanding dramedy.
58
Entertainment Weekly
Owen Gleiberman
Hudson's sunny, ringlet-tossing appeal fits snugly into the film's happy-homemaker ideology: She makes caring for three kids she barely knows look downright glamorous.
50
Chicago Tribune
Mark Caro
You can take the director out of television, but sometimes you can't take television out of the director. Although Garry Marshall has been making movies for longer than he spent creating such series as "The Odd Couple," "Happy Days" and "Laverne and Shirley," his work retains the scent of the small screen.
50
Philadelphia Inquirer
Carrie Rickey
What Raising Helen doesn't offer is a competent (never mind compelling) performance from Hudson, who is as cute as lace pants and has approximately as much acting skill.
50
USA Today
Mike Clark
Almost nothing about Raising Helen rings very true, other than the camera's crush on Kate Hudson.
50
New York Daily News
Jack Mathews
Watching Garry Marshall's Raising Helen is like eating a box of Forrest Gump's chocolates. You may not know exactly what you're going to get, but you can count on a high sugar content.
50
New York Post
Jonathan Foreman
Doesn't press all its obvious lessons, and there are actually a few surprises -- and even a couple of moving and interesting moments -- before an all too predictable resolution.
50
The New York Times
Stephen Holden
A soft-hearted, squishy-minded prototype for a network sitcom, is mildly ingratiating but never laugh-out-loud funny. Even Ms. Hudson's intrepid radiance can't camouflage the premise's leaky foundation.
50
Chicago Sun-Times
Roger Ebert
From beginning to end, we've been there, seen that.
50
ReelViews
James Berardinelli
As unlikely as it may sound, 2004 is the year when directors Kevin Smith and Garry Marshall have made virtually the same movie...Nevertheless, it's impossible to deny that Raising Helen is a near clone of "Jersey Girl."
50
Salon.com
Charles Taylor
If a couple who belonged to the Christian Coalition, or your maiden aunt, or George and Laura Bush were looking for a reassuring night out, Raising Helen would fit the bill nicely.
50
San Francisco Chronicle
Ruthe Stein
Far from the worst cookie-cutter film to come off the Hollywood assembly line, merely the latest.
50
Premiere
Laine Ewen
It's really rather dull, lacking in any originality or flair that might draw attention to the cause. It's lightly comedic, lightly dramatic, lightly tragic, and, therefore, lightly entertaining.
50
Los Angeles Times
Kevin Crust
The agreeable cast led by Hudson and Cusack manage to extract a handful of laughs from the forgettable dialogue, but at nearly two hours, the film goes on far too long.
40
Empire
Liz Beardsworth
Top marks to Joan Cusack for her excellent supporting turn; commiserations to John Corbett as one-dimensional objet désir Pastor Dan -- unhappily saddled with the most tragic line to reach mainstream film for years.
40
TV Guide
Angel Cohn
The kids, especially the Breslin siblings, are cute. Cusack is underused, but makes her annoying, potpourri-loving suburban mom seem sympathetic. And Corbett is well-cast as an eminently suitable, if slightly dull, life mate for the newly grown-up Helen.
40
The Onion (A.V. Club)
Scott Tobias
The strange thing about Raising Helen is that nothing out of the ordinary ever really happens.
40
LA Weekly
Ella Taylor
Raising Helen is the kind of movie you watch on a plane while muttering “utter crap” under your breath -- and then burst into tears.
40
Dallas Observer
Robert Wilonsky
Sitting through Raising Helen is an exercise in frustration, because somewhere inside this big heap of Hollywood nothing is a something (someone, actually) worth saving and savoring. Her name is Joan Cusack.
40
Village Voice
Jessica Winter
John Corbett shuffles in for yet another tour of duty as the bland requisite love interest.
38
Baltimore Sun
Michael Sragow
By the end, this movie's balancing act is the equivalent of network news' equal-time laws. The "fairness" becomes deadening.
38
Boston Globe
Ty Burr
Works so hard to be inoffensive that you may well be offended.
30
Chicago Reader
Staff (Not credited)
The picture flogs a fake dichotomy between career and family for 119 minutes until Hudson digests a feeble moral that Laverne and Shirley would have covered in 25.
30
Wall Street Journal
Joe Morgenstern
Ms. Hudson makes the most of her role, even though that's not saying so very much -- the writing is terribly thin -- while John Corbett gives an unaccountably clumsy performance as a romantic pastor. Joan Cusack gets the funniest lines as Helen's sister, a model of boring mommyhood, but she also stops the movie dead in its tracks every time she plays a scene.
30
Washington Post
Stephen Hunter
You are likely to encounter more surprises on the way to the bathroom each morning than you do in this film.
30
Austin Chronicle
Kimberley Jones
There’s nothing especially offensive about the actress (Hudson); if anything, it’s that lack of offense, her overwhelmingly benign vibe, that has become increasingly repugnant with every picture she puts out.
30
Washington Post
Michael O'Sullivan
It's a question of tone, which jumps back and forth between airy-fairy romantic comedy and leaden family drama with the alacrity of a manic-depressive.
25
Christian Science Monitor
David Sterritt
Great premise, but the ensuing trials and tribulations - not to mention hapless attempts at comedy - are as off-key as a karaoke scene in which Hudson sounds worse than any audition Simon Cowell has ever had to sit through.
25
Rolling Stone
Peter Travers
Despite Joan Cusack, whose comic spark earns the film its only star, Raising Helen is like tumbling into chick-flick hell.
25
Portland Oregonian
M. E. Russell
This goopy dramedy is unfunny, mentally bankrupt and makes parenthood look like a terrifying death sentence.
 The average user rating for this movie is 6.9 (out of 10) based on 27 User Votes
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