| 70 |
The Hollywood Reporter
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
A slick and entertaining package.
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| 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)
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
An undemanding dramedy.
|
| 58 |
Entertainment Weekly
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
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
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
Almost nothing about Raising Helen rings very true, other than the camera's crush on Kate Hudson.
|
| 50 |
New York Daily News
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
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
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
From beginning to end, we've been there, seen that.
|
| 50 |
ReelViews
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
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
Far from the worst cookie-cutter film to come off the Hollywood assembly line, merely the latest.
|
| 50 |
Premiere
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
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)
The strange thing about Raising Helen is that nothing out of the ordinary ever really happens.
|
| 40 |
LA Weekly
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
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
John Corbett shuffles in for yet another tour of duty as the bland requisite love interest.
|
| 38 |
Baltimore Sun
By the end, this movie's balancing act is the equivalent of network news' equal-time laws. The "fairness" becomes deadening.
|
| 38 |
Boston Globe
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
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
You are likely to encounter more surprises on the way to the bathroom each morning than you do in this film.
|
| 30 |
Austin Chronicle
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
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
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
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.
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