E-Mail This Article to a Friend RAISING HELEN

I defer to the press kit to describe the cliché’d opening of Raising Helen: "Helen Harris is living the life she always dreamed of. Her career at a top Manhattan modeling agency is on the rise; she spends her days at fashion shows and her nights at the city’s hottest clubs." After 10 minutes of this crap, you can’t help praying that something bad happens. Then her sister and brother-in-law die in a car crash, she’s put in charge of their three children, and you feel a bit guilty. But we’re in director Garry Marshall’s world, where smiles always follow tears, and in the end, the accident is the best thing that ever happened! Helen (Kate Hudson) may lose her job and be in over her head as a "mom," but the resolution is never in doubt. Marshall lays on the sentimentality thick, and he skillfully, if superficially, juggles a number of relationships. But Helen’s rivalry with her anal, disapproving older sister (Joan Cusack) is the only conflict that feels real and painful. Otherwise, it can laughable how quickly she dons her Superwoman cape. John Corbett and Helen Mirren co-star. (114 minutes)