The Next Best Thing (2000)

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Madonna strikes again! This time, she plays a yoga instructor who gets dumped by her boyfriend, she and her gay friend played by Rupert Everett sleep together, finds out she's pregnant, and they both raise their son together within the next six years. Then, Madonna starts hooking up with Benjamin Bratt and she wants to take the little boy away from Rupert Everett in order to move in with her new boy toy, and a nasty custody battle erupts. Then it's discovered at the hearing that the father wasn't Rupert Everett, but the ex-boyfriend who Madonna got dumped by!

 

Not only does this film change tones throughout, it's also sadly the final project directed by Oscar-winner John Schlesinger of "Midnight Cowboy" and "Marathon Man" fame. And the soundtrack contains Madonna's cover of "American Pie" just to let you know. Let's blow "The Next Best Thing" down the dungeon!

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As usual with a crappy movie like this, the critical reviews provide some real gems of wisecracks. From Roger Ebert's review:

 

The movie's problem is that it sees every side of all issues. It sides with Robert's need to be a father, Benjamin's need to be a husband and lover, and Abbie's need to have a best friend, a husband, a lover, a son and a lawyer. Luckily there is plenty of money for all of this, because Abbie is a yoga instructor and Robert is a gardener, and we know what piles of money you can make in those jobs, especially in the movies.

Madonna never emerges as a plausible human being in the movie; she's more like a spokeswoman for a video on alternative parenting lifestyles.

Watching the movie, I asked myself why so many movies with homosexuals feel that they need to be about homosexuality. Why can't a movie just get over it? I submit as evidence the magical new film "Wonder Boys," in which the homosexuality of the character played by Robert Downey Jr. is completely absorbed into the much larger notion of who he is as a person. Nobody staggers backward and gasps out that his character is gay, because of course he's gay and everybody has known that for a long time and, hey, some people are gay, ya know? Watching "The Next Best Thing," we suspect that if sexuality were banned as a topic of conversation, Abbie and Robert would be reduced to trading yoga and gardening tips.

 

And, from Leonard Maltin's BOMB capsule review:

 

Everett keeps telling Madonna how beautiful she is, but it takes late '40s-style Joan Crawford lighting to try to put that over.