 Many critics conclude that Raising Helen, starring Kate Hudson, might work as a TV sitcom (or as the Chicago Sun-Times' critic Roger Ebert put it, "a pilot for a TV sitcom"), but is hardly worth the price of a movie ticket. Peter Howell in the Toronto Star suggests that "even those who seek the undemanding entertainment of life troubles being bravely dealt with might end up wishing they were given more than just sitcom resolutions." Ty Burr in the Boston Globe writes that the movie "works so hard to be inoffensive that you may well be offended." Stephen Hunter in the Washington Post concedes that he has a certain fondness for Hudson. "It's hard to frown upon her, even when the material seems thin and spun out for too long. She immediately took my heart hostage with that crinkly smile and the utter decency she conveys, and so I want to please her somehow. Too bad the movie won't let me," he writes. Jack Matthews in the New York Daily News, however, comments that "Hudson hasn't done a worthwhile thing since Almost Famous. You get the impression she's reading scripts with more thought given to her billing than to any acting challenge." And a few critics suggest that even if Raising Helen had made it to TV, it would have been canceled. Comments Eleanor Ringel Gillespie in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution: "It's one of those bogus 'sincere' pictures -- a schmaltz-ridden mediocrity without an honest moment in it." |
