WITH each passing year, Kate Hudson becomes more like her equally blonde and bubbly mother, Goldie Hawn.

Alas, the young actress seems to have inherited the same dubious taste in scripts, following infrequent hits (Almost Famous, How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days) with dire, sitcom-lite comedies.

Raising Helen is a saccharine case in point: an inoffensive yet flimsy fable about modern-day parenthood which sounds suspiciously like a gender-reversed Jersey Girl.

Helen Harris (Kate Hudson) is the high-flying personal assistant to revered modelling agency owner Dominique (Helen Mirren), who demands absolute dedication and devotion from her staff.

The young PA's future plans are jeopardised when tragedy strikes and her sister Lindsay (Felicity Huffman) and her husband are killed in an accident.

Unthinkably, Lindsay's will names Helen as the legal guardian of her three children, Audrey (Hayden Panettiere), Henry (Spencer Breslin) and Sarah (Abigail Breslin), much to the consternation of Helen's other sister Jenny (Joan Cusack), a house-proud mother with a brood of her own.

The pressures of motherhood rapidly take their toll and Dominique fires Helen from her job.

The fledgling family moves to Queens, where Helen takes up a new position at a car salesroom run by Mickey Massey (Hector Elizondo).

Romantic entanglements ensue between Helen and Pastor Dan (John Corbett), who runs the local school where the children are enrolled.

Raising Helen is a long, depressing slog for scant rewards.

The two-hour running time feels almost twice as long and the romance between Helen and Pastor Dan takes so long to spark into life that the doe-eyed declarations of the final 15 minutes feel like an afterthought.

Certainly, that might explain the clumsy dialogue.

Hudson is too perky and cheery by half and the pitfalls which arise out of Helen's predicament are solved with alarming ease, often by the people around Helen rather than by the heroine herself.

The children are winsome and Corbett essays another bland love interest in a similar vein to My Big Fat Greek Wedding.

The usually reliable Cusack is not allowed to play to her strengths, struggling with a role almost totally devoid of comic potential.

Screenwriters Jack Amiel and Michael Begler burden each of the moppets with a personality quirk which needs to be solved before the end credits, plus an implausible reconciliation of the two sisters, eased along by cloying missives from beyond the grave.

RATING: 3/10