Raising Helen is a wonderfully enjoyable romantic comedy in the fairy-tale tradition of Pretty Woman, Runaway Bride, The Princess Diaries. This is hardly surprising seeing that it was directed by Garry Marshall, who also directed those movies.

Admittedly, one reason why I found Raising Helen so enjoyable probably has much to do with the protagonist being a woman in her twenties who attempts to juggle work, social life, family and other aspects of her life…

The story itself makes for few thrills and little excitement. Kate Hudson plays Helen Harris, a carefree young woman, with a successful career in the fashion industry, who works hard all day, visits her family in the evening and parties hard in the hottest clubs all night. To all intents and purposes, she is living life to the full. All this suddenly changes when her elder sister dies in a car crash, leaving her to bring up her three small children. So Helen has to adapt from carefree glamour girl to responsible mom.

Much like other movies in this tradition, the film is simply a humorous depiction of a woman’s emotional development as she is forced to face a situation, which reveals that her previous way of life was actually incomplete, and through which she gains more fullness as a person. The idea is that Helen can only take proper care of the three children when she stops being a child herself (hence the title Raising Helen).

Admittedly this is not the stuff of great cinema. In fact, Raising Helen has few pretensions: the humour is obvious, verging on crude; the emotion, although credible, verges dangerously on pathos most of the time; the story line has no exciting twists, and there are even a few irritating soppy clichés (Helen telling 10-year-old Henry to get over his phobia of basketball because his Dad would have liked it, Pastor Dan telling Helen, “I am a sexy-man o’ God”).

In spite of all this, I found Raising Helen wonderfully entertaining. There is loads of woman power here: the initial close-up shots set the mood, presenting a successful Helen at her job to the slick tune of Joan Osborne’s Stand Back: You Crowd My Day. Of course there is also tons of feel-good factor thrown in for good measure. Bubbly Kate Hudson is always smiling and charming with never so much as a single hair out of place, her suitor, pastor Dan Parker (John Corbett, from My Big Fat Greek Wedding) is solidly sexy and handsome, and the three children she inherits (two of whom are real-life siblings) have wonderful faces all of which are used to great effect.

Raising Helen will not change anyone’s life nor does it give particularly deep insight into people’s emotions. Rather it illustrates a condition many women are all too familiar with – attempting to cope with various responsibilities, career, family, looks, social life – and love interest too – with humour, sympathy and compassion. For this reason alone, Raising Helen is great fun to watch.

Sandra Aquilina