Since the answers to the last two questions are resoundingly "no" and "no," we will give Ms. Pop Diva the benefit of the doubt, though the thudding awfulness of her work in The Next Best Thing does recall her wretched performance as the accused murderer in 1993's Body of Evidence. But nobody involved will want to make this banal "comedy" a highlight of his or her résumé -- not if he or she has any sense. The one exception could be screenwriter Tom Ropelewski, whose brief résumé starts with the third-rate thriller The Kiss and proceeds downhill from there, believe it or not. (Anyone who's seen Madhouse, which he wrote and directed, will believe me.)
To be fair, however, let's spread the "credit" around. What was Schlesinger -- whose classics go back as far as Billy Liar, Darling, Marathon Man, and Midnight Cowboy, and up to 1995's Cold Comfort Farm -- thinking?
Madonna plays Abbie, a Los Angeles yoga instructor with a penchant for picking the wrong guys. When her latest two-year affair, with egocentric record producer Kevin (Michael Vartan), goes the way of all the others, she seeks comfort from her best friend, Robert (Rupert Everett), a gay landscape architect. Not too long thereafter -- though the passage of time is unclearly marked throughout -- she and Robert get drunk and have a one-night stand. And not long after that, she realizes she's pregnant. After minimal shilly-shallying she and Robert decide to raise the child together without getting married or pretending that their deep friendship is anything other than what it is.
Ka-blam! Five or six years pass. Sam (Malcolm Stumpf), their son, has grown into a thoroughly normal, likable moppet. But trouble enters paradise when Abbie finally meets Mr. Right -- wealthy, handsome, understanding businessman Ben (Benjamin Bratt) -- and decides to get married. Emotional and legal chaos ensues.
The gay-man-sets-up-house-with-female-pal story is nothing new, dating back at least as far as 1978's A Different Story, which itself was no great shakes. And in light of developments like California's anti-same-sex-marriage referendum, the issue of gays' legal rights -- which the last act of the film touches on -- continues to be of great current importance. But the film never really deals with anything: Its problems are unclearly presented and its solutions forced, in large part because the characters are so illconceived.
Even before his public breakthrough with My Best Friend's Wedding, Everett had given a series of excellent performances, starting as long ago as 1983 in Another Country. And at occasional moments, he is able to make Robert appealing, but not for long. Ropelewski's comic dialogue is so arch, so poorly written, that, hard as it may be to believe, it defeats even Everett's great talent. Add to that the fact that, for the most part, the film fails to give us any reason to like or care about these people. Abbie is simply dull; Ben is an idealized Perfect Man, a cipher. Robert appears to be an absolutely flawless father to Sam, as though we would lose all sympathy if his parenting were even a little flawed.
The filmmakers bend over so far backward to set up their climactic situation that they suck the life out of the characters. Even worse they add complications to the plot in the final half hour that require Robert suddenly to act like a bastard and a moron -- and then they fail to do anything with those complications. A minor character reappears in a dramatic Paul Drake-like courtroom moment, then is limply dispensed with through a single line of dialogue later.
In order to give the appearance of dramatic complexity, there are two hackneyed subplots that also serve no function: the father who can't deal with his son being gay, and the buddy who has died of AIDS. As the latter's lover, Doogie Howser (a.k.a. Neil Patrick Harris) shows up once every 20 minutes or so, as if to remind us (ineffectively) of a more sober reality. And to make this thread even worse, a big deal is made of the fact that the dead guy's favorite song was Don MacLean's "American Pie" -- a detail that presumably has more to do with setting up Madonna's remake of the song than with its dramatic value.
Now I will confess that I liked "American Pie"… when it first came out… for about a week and a half. But it doesn't take long for its dopey, pretentious lyrics and its cutesy-poo internal rhymes to wear thin. And while I realize that human nature is infinite in its variety; that there are, as absurdist rockers Ween would have it, "many colors in the homo rainbow"; and that any simple notion about the superiority of gay aesthetic preferences are doubtless a form of sexist stereotyping…, still: A gay man whose favorite song is "American Pie"??? I'm surprised that the rest of the gay characters in the film didn't die of embarrassment when that irritating ditty takes on the function of an emotionally charged epitaph. While there is much laughter to be had at The Next Best Thing, I counted one intentional chuckle. The rest of the laughs are strictly at the participants' expense.
