If you looked up the word "cute" in any '60s-'70s show-biz dictionary, Goldie Hawn's picture popped up. Do so now, and you get Kate Hudson's -- for good genetic reason. Something about that twinkle in the eye and the laugh that can't wait to burst out from behind the smile.

		'Raising Helen' Starring: Kate Hudson, John Corbett, Joan Cusack, Helen Mirren Rating: PG-13 for teen thematic issues Director: Garry Marshall

Hawn raised Hudson, but a trio of orphans is "Raising Helen" in the Garry Marshall romantic comedy at hand. Kate plays a fashion agency star on-the-rise, a Manhattan party girl who is happy to be her nieces' and nephew's favorite Aunt Helen -- but not so happy to find herself in custody of them after their mom's demise.

The kids' less favorite Aunt Jenny (Joan Cusack) isn't happy about it either. Eldest of the sisters, with a brood of her own in Queens, Jenny had expected to take charge of Audrey (15), Henry (10) and Sarah (5). She's bent seriously out of shape that the role was bequeathed to flighty Helen instead of her dour, responsible self.

Radical adjustments are in order. Helen discovers she can't boogie 'til 3 a.m. and still get the kids off to school on time. Her aptly named boss Dominique (Helen Mirren) discovers that Helen's mind isn't on her work any more -- and sacks her.

For better or worse, Helen resigns herself to being a full- rather than part-time single parent, putting her own private and professional life on hold. But the choice of a new Lutheran church school for the kids produces some increasingly close and disturbing encounters of the romantic kind with the school's hunky pastor-principal (John Corbett). After frightening Helen at the admissions interview (by telling her the kids must take a blood test to prove they're really Lutherans), he quickly proves to be a good-time guy known as "the Holy Goalie" on his religious hockey-league team.

In the adept hands of director Marshall ("Pretty Woman," "Runaway Bride," "The Princess Diaries"), domestic trials and tribulations -- from the mess of easter-egg dyeing to the recurring presence of a live and dead turtle -- are charmingly rendered. Helen gradually learns how to referee the ceaseless sibling squabbling but can't quite bring herself to be the authority figure who curbs the rebellious 15-year-old's libido. That job devolves -- hilariously -- to a next-door neighbor with a baseball bat and -- in the film's best moment -- a tour-de-force scene in which Cusack as testy Aunt Jenny breaks up a post-prom seduction at the local No-Tell Motel.

There are tears and soap-operatic excesses along the way, but -- in addition to Cusack's wonderful performance -- there's a hilarious turn by Hector Elizondo (a regular in all Marshall movies) as Mickey Massie, the world's sleaziest used -- excuse me, "prior-owned" -- car salesman.

Corbett is a nice low-key (if not exactly charismatic) romancer, and the three youngsters are fine, especially Spencer Breslin as sad-eyed little Henry. But best of all is Kate Hudson -- looking as much like Marlene Dietrich as Goldie Hawn, from some angles -- with that disarming, million-dollar smile of hers, getting her out of every jam.

"Raising Helen" might be pejoratively termed a "chick flick," but it's something more: a surprisingly serene, endearing, life-affirming family story of the type that doesn't come along too often these days.