_The_Next_Best_Thing_ (PG-13) no stars (out of ****)
Best friends may make the best mistakes, but Madonna makes the absolute worst, at least in terms of her film career, which has been a comedy of errors or a horrible tragedy, depending on how one looks at it. After the surprisingly impressive anomaly that was _Evita_ (which won her a Golden Globe), the pop music diva is back to her infamously poor projects and even poorer performances with _The_Next_Best_Thing_--which, as the title states, is not the best, but it's hardly that close to it. In fact, this awful mess is more like the absolute worst.
One can understand Madonna and co-star Rupert Everett's decision to make this film. The two are longtime friends, and it gives them an opportunity to work together in roles that are "like" themselves--or, rather, how _they'd_like_ to see themselves: a witty everyman (Everett) who just happens to be openly gay, and--more notably--a "normal" woman (Madonna). But, as her nearly two-decade-long stint in the spotlight has shown, being "normal" is hardly natural for Madonna. What is natural to her, it seems, is that strange British-or-whatever accent this Detroit native has adopted in recent years. And that affected speech pattern always gets in the way; while she does have a few uncharacteristically relaxed moments (perhaps due to her ease with Everett), the funky accent eventually creeps in and ruins it.
Then again, with one big exception, Madonna's voice has always been grating in her screen efforts, long before she fancied herself a foreigner. That exception, of course, is in the entirely sung-through _Evita_, and that's no coincidence. Singing is something that she is clearly comfortable with and--crucially--confident in doing, and that's what made the difference in her justly-lauded performance. It was not so much the indisputable fact that she's a much better vocalist than thespian, but that she was considerably calmer and thus more natural, not trying so hard to prove her "acting ability." Without a musical crutch, however, she overcompensates--as she again does in _The_Next_Best_Thing_.
It must be said that there's so much deficiency in the film that one can almost understand the need to make up for it with overkill. In _Next_Best_, Madonna's Abbie and Everett's Robert--two generically-written characters--are best friends living in L.A. Coming off of a nasty breakup (hers) and the death of a close friend (his), the two drown their sorrows one night and end up doing the dirty deed. She gets pregnant, and the two decide to raise the child (a son, named Sam) together. Light stuff, all done with a light touch, but so light as to make one wonder if director John Schlesinger was ever in the room when the film was shot. Madonna is always clueless as an actress, so it's no surprise that her formless, flavorless portrayal of Abbie cries out for guidance. The big shock is how bad the usually reliable Everett is. His ability to toss off bon mots is less smooth as smug, often peppered with some ill-advised mugging and other sorts of physical gags. The biggest botch of all, though, is Schlesinger's, with the centerpiece night: while the aim is not to be romantic, there should be at least some sense of warmth and affection; these are, after all, best friends. But there's no tenderness, just some would-be funny instances of furniture being broken (ha ha), glimpses of the two doing drunken dance steps, and closeups of liquor being poured into goblets.
_Next_Best_ would be bad enough as a comedy; once the film flashes forward six years, tired cute kid humor is added into the mix. Yet for some reason screenwriter Thomas Ropelewski, who doesn't come close to meeting his modest initial goals, decides to aim even higher. Abbie meets and falls for a New York-based businessman (Benjamin Bratt, boring), and then the film takes the left-field turn into a heavyhanded custody battle drama. As feared, this shift brings out the worst in Madonna, who cannot hold her own with Everett, who is indeed a capable dramatic actor. But she's not the only one at a loss as to what to do--so are Ropelewski and Schlesinger, who open up a can of worms and then just toss it aside. Many films use text cards to divulge the fate of their characters, but I have never seen a film rest its entire resolution on them. The film fades out, with no sense of closure--or even a sense of things coming together for a close--then states in print how it all turns out. What the hell?
There other flubs in _The_Next_Best_Thing_ (such as a line where Robert mentions it's the 21st Century in a scene that, in the film's time frame, should be set around 1993; or the fact that Robert's sole love interest, a cardiologist, has no name and is rather comically listed in the closing credits as "Cardiologist"), but to go over them would be as pointless an exercise as the entire film is. One should just not make a flub oneself, and avoid this _Thing_.
Michael Dequina twotrey@juno.com | michael_jordan@geocities.com | jordan_host@sportsmail.com | mrbrown@iname.com Mr. Brown's Movie Site: http://welcome.to/mrbrown CinemaReview Magazine: http://www.CinemaReview.com on ICQ: #25289934 | on AOL Instant Messenger: MrBrown23
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