Kate Hudson is her mother’s daughter.
Unfortunately, that’s more a hindrance than a help.
You can’t watch Hudson without thinking of her equally perky mom, Goldie Hawn. She’s the spitting image of Hawn. It’s easy to imagine Hudson’s Almost Famous groupie Penny Lane aging into Hawn’s past-her-prime groupie Suzette in The Banger Sisters. And when playing for laughs, they both come across as slightly kooky, somewhat klutzy, happy-go-lucky free spirits.
And reading between the lines of a recent interview, Hudson clearly feels she’s caught in her mother’s shadow.
“You can feel it when you walk into an audition,” she tells Vogue. “Maybe I was right for a part and maybe I wasn’t. I would always do the best I could, but I knew that if I was having an off day there would have been people sitting there whispering Goldie Hawn‘s daughter is horrible. She should really choose another career.’”
Please, it’s crazy for anyone to think it would take 13 films in seven years—including the upcoming You, Me and Dupree—for Hudson to make us forget Hawn. Give the poor girl a break. Her mother’s a pop-cultural institution dating back to her Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In days as a body-painted, bikini-wearing flower child. Foul Play, Private Benjamin and Shampoo established Hawn as one of the best comedic actresses of her generation. Bird on a Wire, Death Becomes Her and The First Wives Club proved that a middle-aged woman could consistently draw an audience.
But no one thinks of Hawn as an Oscar winner (for 1969’s Cactus Flower). We just see the bubbly blonde who often portrayed unlikely feminist role models.
And Hudson could find herself saddled with the same legacy if she doesn’t distinguish herself from her mother. She’s not doing herself any favors by making one humdrum comedy after another.
Hudson certainly seemed content to come across as a clumsier version of Hawn when she first caught our attention in 200 Cigarettes. But Almost Famous—which earned Hudson an Oscar nomination—showed that there was more to her than the comic genes she inherited from Hawn. But Hudson now seems uninterested in grappling anything more demanding than How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days. The likes of About Adam, Alex and Emma, Le Divorce and Raising Helen will not get Hudson far, no matter how often she outshines her on-screen love match.
Even Hudson’s rare dramatic endeavors felt lacking. Who demanded another remake of The Four Feathers? And The Skeleton Key existed solely to exploit the success of such other female-driven PG-13 horror yarns as The Grudge and The Ring.
You, Me and Dupree probably won’t do much for Hudson beyond the possibility of being her first hit since How to Lose… Given the scenario—unwanted houseguest Owen Wilson causes nothing but headaches for newlyweds Hudson and Matt Dillon—you get the sense that Hudson’s job is to merely roll her eyes at Wilson’s shenanigans.
Maybe Hudson’s self-esteem will receive a much-needed boost with A Dream of Red Mansions, a fact-based historical drama that chronicles the romance between a photojournalist (Hudson) and a Chinese revolutionary (Ken Watanabe). Then again, talk of a How to Lose… sequel suggests she’s regrettably not ready to abandon her old ways to—intentionally or otherwise—emulate her mother.
The Bottom Line
Hudson’s yet to fulfill the potential of Almost Famous. In order to do so, she needs to stop—at least temporarily—trying to make us giggle. She demonstrated she’s got talent. But until she truly challenges herself, she’ll always to court the inevitable comparisons to her famous mom.
