Really Surprised!

An Exercise In Nonsense

I was totally surprised at how great this film.You could feel your paranoia rise as the film went on and as you gradually learned the details of the real situation.

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

It's 1992. Abbie Reynolds (Madonna) is an L.A. yoga teacher. Her best friend Robert Whittaker (Rupert Everett) is gay. She gets dumped by music producer boyfriend Kevin Lasater (Michael Vartan). They go to the funeral of their friend David (Neil Patrick Harris)'s gay partner Joseph. Abbie wants a baby and Robert assists during one drunken night. She gets pregnant. His father (Josef Sommer) is angry while his mother (Lynn Redgrave) is happy. Abbie and Robert decide to raise the baby together. As their boy Sam grows up, their simple arrangement gets less simple. Sam has questions. Abbie starts dating perplexed Ben Cooper (Benjamin Bratt). Robert hires Elizabeth Ryder (Illeana Douglas) to sue for custody.This should be a drama. There seems to be a desire for this to be a comedy but the subject matter does not allow the funny. At best, this could be Kramer vs Kramer and I can't see how that could be accomplished either. It's really a hopeless case and Madonna does not help. They could rewrite this a million more times and it still won't work. It's all problematic and the child seems to be lost in the mayhem.

Oh what the hell?... I don't care of what others think, I really enjoyed this movie back in summer 2000 when I watched it on theaters.I made a reflection today. I have spent a lot of money on actresses that I feel attracted to. In the same year, 2000, I watched many of Kirsten Dunst's movies just because I thought she was sexy.I watched "The Next Best Thing" because I was as die hard fan of Madonna's work and sexiness. To be honest, the plot isn't that bad at all and it even has some drama although it's considered as a romantic comedy.The plot is somehow related to a comedy because the situation is ridiculous but it surprisingly works for the movie. Getting pregnant with your gay best male friend and raising a child together? Yeah right.I recommend this movie ONLY for those who love Madonna and her work. Otherwise, stay away from it!

Hundreds of years from now, I imagine historians and archeologists, not to mention film preservationists, will spend years and years gazing in puzzled horror at Madonna's body of film. It will evoke feelings similar to the nausea, fear and disbelief we feel now while studying Mayan hieroglyphics of wholesale human sacrifice and ritual slaughter. Only much less interesting, naturally. What is it about Madonna? In movie after movie we have to endure the excruciating process of her struggling with all her might to bring a human emotion to her face. This Herculean labor, brought to its absolute zenith in Evita, but not much abated here, may be great fun for afficionados of porn acting, but for the rest of us: sheer torture. Then there's her voice. She delivers her lines like a tenth-grader playing Hamlet's mother, but with less conviction. Madonna seems entirely incapable of expressing intelligence or emotion, but if she would just let her hair down and act like the good old all-American tramp she is, all might be forgiven. Alas, she seems to have some curious delusions of grandeur. She is the most self-conscious bad actor who ever disgraced a movie screen, and yet she doesn't have the nerve to be camp. Is it possible to be wooden and plastic at the same time? Madonna manages to make Jenna Jameson look like Judi Dench. The movie? Couldn't tell you a thing about it.

Mercilessly condemned by viewers and professional critics, this comedy-drama is not very good; but I have seen films that are a lot worse. A young woman named Abbie (Madonna), who is straight, has a one-night fling with her best friend Robert (Rupert Everett), who is gay. The result is that she gets pregnant. Abbie and Robert agree to raise the child together; but complications ensue when Abbie falls in love with someone else.The first part of the film is lighthearted, and plays like a music video, with some good songs, like "Steppin' Out With My Baby". By the time we get into the second half, however, the lightheartedness has morphed into bitterness and controversy, a change in tone that is jarringly out of sync with earlier sequences.But an even bigger problem is the casting of the two leads, and the Robert character. Madonna tries hard to be a convincing Abbie; her performance isn't bad, really it isn't; she's just a little too wooden. But her celebrity persona as a musical pop star overwhelms all effort to make her seem like some average homebody. As a result, I would have preferred another actress.I did not care for Robert at all, with his exaggerated attempts at witty banter and his fluttering about, typical gay stereotyped behavior, vain and self-absorbed. Later, he becomes rigid in his ability to compromise, a character contrivance that only serves to advance the film's plot. And then Rupert Everett, with his hammy overacting, makes the already flamboyant Robert character almost unendurable. Everett's British accent in a Southern California setting is totally out of place. Almost any other actor of comparable age could have rendered a less painful performance.What makes the film bearable is some good music, including Don McClean's old song "American Pie", and a nifty performance by Malcolm Stumpf as the child, a performance that was thankfully lacking in precocious behavior so often seen in child characters.If they had reworked the script in such a way as to have a more consistent storyline, toned down the Robert character, and chosen different performers for the two lead roles, "The Next Best Thing" might have been better received. As is, the film is interesting mainly for its music, and as a textbook case of what can go wrong when script and casting mistakes are not corrected.