In theaters

RAISING HELEN, directed by Garry Marshall, written by Jack Amiel and Michael Begler, 119 minutes, rated PG-13.

The new Garry Marshall movie, “Raising Helen,” stars Kate Hudson as Helen Harris, a savvy, New York fashionista relentlessly on the corporate climb and forever on the go.

She’s a free-swinging single, as light and as golden as the tumble of curls cascading down her back. Currently an executive assistant at a Manhattan-based modeling agency, Helen is pushing to become a full-fledged agent, which she proves in the film’s first big set piece that she has the moxie to do.

With ease, Helen is able to juggle a bevy of supermodels, photo shoots, egos and runways as well as calls from Paris and Milan, all of which fill her busy social calendar. She knows the right people, she has enough charm to be disarming, and, most importantly, she has the support of Dominque (Helen Mirren), her icy boss with the chunky jewelry and severe hair who is so thin, she makes Vogue’s notoriously spindly Anna Wintour look downright Rubenesque in comparison.

Helen has the instincts of a corporate success, not a successful mother. Still, when her sister and brother-in-law are killed in a car wreck, it’s she – not her supermom sister, Jennie (Joan Cusack) – who is chosen to be the guardian of her sister’s three children (Hayden Panettiere, Spencer Breslin, Abigail Breslin). What’s the logic behind that, you might ask. Well, for starters, there wouldn’t be a movie without a plot twist.

As written by Jack Amiel and Michael Begler, “Raising Helen” follows Helen and the three kids from the bright lights of Manhattan to the cheaper flats of Queens, where they’re all given a dose of the “real world” when Helen loses her job thanks to Dominique’s belief that “children and fashion don’t mix.”

What’s a girl to do? Naturally, hook up with the local pastor, a strapping Lutheran played by John Corbett (“My Big Fat Greek Wedding”), who notes after Helen’s initial rejection of him that “I’m a sexy man of God, and I know it.” Miraculously, thunder doesn’t clap during that scene, nor does lightning strike.

Also miraculous is that “Raising Helen” isn’t as bad as it sounds. The movie is out of touch, for sure, and it’s as predictable as the smile Hudson flashes whenever the script lets her down, which is often. Still, the kids are cute, some of the throwaway lines do pack a surprising wit, and it never sinks to the lows achieved in Hudson’s more recent films, particularly “Alex & Emma” and the woeful “How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days.”

Some real parents will marvel that in Helen’s world, all familial troubles – great and small – are vanquished with sitcom ease. That’s not out of character for Marshall. Throughout his career, in movies ranging from “Beaches” and “Pretty Woman” to “Runaway Bride” and “The Princess Diaries,” Marshall has embraced the idea that since movies should offer an escape, that escape must be light, formulaic and reasonably pleasant. It also should never be too challenging, and it’s crucial for the key characters to move in the most unthreatening and banal of circles.

In “Raising Helen,” he delivers just that.

Grade: C+

On video and DVD

MONSTER, written and directed by Patty Jenkins, 109 minutes, rated R.

Charlize Theron, the South African bombshell who never successfully carried a movie until she smashingly succeeded in Patty Jenkins’ “Monster,” found herself the role of a lifetime and an Academy Award for Best Actress with this singular performance as Aileen Wuornos – the real-life serial killer and Florida prostitute who killed seven men before being captured, convicted and sent to death row in 1992, where she was electrocuted 10 years later.

At first a romance, the movie dissolves into a horror show as Jenkins chronicles Wuornos’ chaotic, dysfunctional relationship with Selby Wall (Christina Ricci) – a fictionalized version of Wuornos’ real-life, 18-year-old lover, Tyria Moore.

“Monster” isn’t an apologia for Wuornos’ crimes, but Jenkins does attempt to understand them with a measure of empathy, particularly since they stem from an act of self-defense, when Wuornos was raped by one of her tricks. The movie is an uneasy roadmap of her violent undoing, a portrait of a woman with no moral center who chose murder as a way to steal money and thus, in her mind, to stay in love.

Theron’s beauty has been used by Hollywood far more often than her talent, but here, she has fully, defiantly transformed herself, greasing back her hair, dying it dishwater blond, shaving off her eyebrows, yellowing her teeth, pitting her skin, gaining 30 pounds and, in the process, delivering the best performance of 2003.

As Wuornos, she is as remarkable as she is unrecognizable, but it would be a mistake to assume for a minute that her performance is only the result of mere physical transformation. It’s performance as art – so powerful,

calibrated and raw, it’s

difficult to shake the pain, vulnerability and ultimately the rage Theron expresses onscreen.

She’s fantastic here, never better, and her performance – wild, loose and unexpected, with the screen barely able to contain her – is something to behold.

Grade: A

Christopher Smith is the Bangor Daily News film critic. His reviews appear Mondays and Fridays in Style, 5:30 p.m. Thursdays on WLBZ 2 Bangor and WCSH 6 Portland, and are archived at Rotten

Tomatoes.com. He may be reached at BDNFilm1

@aol.com.