The Next Best Thing
USA 2000
Reviewed by Kevin Maher
Synopsis
Our synopses give away the plot in full, including surprise twists.
Los Angeles, the early 90s. Abbie, a yoga teacher, is dumped by her boyfriend Kevin. She complains to her gay best friend Robert, a gardener, that she's getting old and wants a baby. The next day, after attending a funeral, they drunkenly have sex. Abbie soon discovers she's pregnant. She asks Robert, whom she says is the baby's father, to live with her and raise the child. He agrees; Abbie later gives birth to a son, Sam.
Six years later Abbie meets Ben, an investment banker. She brings him home to meet Robert, who is hostile. Ben and Abbie fall in love and plan to get married. Robert worries that this will weaken his relationship with Sam and protests. Ben is offered a job in New York; Abbie decides to leave with him and take Sam. Robert sues Abbie over custody of Sam. She reveals to Robert that her ex-boyfriend Kevin is actually Sam's biological father. Robert tells Kevin. In court Kevin demands time to get to know his son. The judge adjourns the case. Robert, Abbie and Ben accidentally meet each other outside Sam's school. They reconcile their differences. Abbie allows Sam to have dinner with Robert.
Review
Like so many movies starring Madonna, The Next Best Thing fetishises her wearily iconic body. When Abbie, the yoga teacher that she plays in director John Schlesinger's romantic comedy, stands semi-naked in her bedroom, her drooling boyfriend Kevin pays homage to her "fantastic body". Then, soon after, Abbie's best friend Robert (Rupert Everett) tells her, "You are the most beautiful woman I know!" During the many yoga scenes that feature throughout, the camera lingers over Madonna's contorted frame, beguiled by her entwined, self-enfolded limbs. The cumulative effect is that, as in the historical musical Evita, the erotic thriller Body of Evidence and even the baseball movie A League of their Own, Madonna remains resolutely 'Madonna'. As a protean vessel into which the pop-cultural anxieties of the past two decades have been poured, she has an enduring symbolic appeal. But her performance here proves once more that she can't deliver in close-up. Her line readings are flat, seemingly stifled by the weight of being Madonna. Such lines as "Look at me, I'm not 24 anymore!" seem irritably inimical to her.
Admittedly, Madonna isn't helped by Thomas Ropelewski's preposterous screenplay (he directed and co-wrote Look Who's Talking Now). Characters inhabit The Next Best Thing as they would a promotional video for a new-age lifestyle product. Here the limits of being are defined by tan, muscle development and the amount of incense sticks in the bathroom. When Abbie and new boyfriend Ben have a first date, it's no surprise that they discuss finding "muscles in your body that you never knew existed." There's a childish simplicity to the dialogue that often verges on the bizarre. When Ben, the investment banker, describes his job, he proudly declares that he "takes sick companies and makes them well". Even when the script occasionally demands pathos, it is delivered via ineffably hollow lines - Robert remembers a lost love, announcing, "I miss him; he was totally me!" Or later at the platitudinous courtroom climax, he shouts, "Being a real parent takes more than DNA!"
Dramatically, Ropelewski and Schlesinger spend the entire movie constructing a nebulous middle ground where all parties in the custody battle ultimately deserve to parent Abbie's precocious son Sam. Unfortunately this drains the court scenes of any tension. Sam himself is an empty cipher, a perky child golem who automatically adjusts to every traumatic turn in his life. (He has a similar function to the child-as-catalyst character in Big Daddy.)
As in many recent romantic comedies (The Object of My Affection, Three to Tango), The Next Best Thing's depiction of its gay characters is decidedly inane. But here the 'witty gay sidekick' (similar to Everett's role in My Best Friend's Wedding) has a pivotal narrative function, which makes his clichéd characterisation slightly more problematic. When a director of Schlesinger's stature, a film-maker adept at depicting alienation and subculture (Midnight Cowboy, 1969; Day of the Locust, 1974), can produce no better, it becomes unforgivable.
Credits
- Director
- John Schlesinger
- Producers
- Tom Rosenberg
- Leslie Dixon
- Linne Radmin
- Screenplay
- Thomas Ropelewski
- Director of Photography
- Elliot Davis
- Editor
- Peter Honess
- Production Design
- Howard Cummings
- Music/Orchestra Conductor
- Gabriel Yared
- ©Lakeshore Entertainment Corp. and Paramount Pictures
- Production Companies
- Lakeshore Entertainment and Paramount Pictures present a Lakeshore
- Entertainment production
- Executive Producers
- Gary Lucchesi
- Ted Tannebaum
- Lewis Manilow
- Co-producers
- Marcus Viscidi
- Richard S. Wright
- Associate Producer
- Meredith Zamsky
- Production Co-ordinator
- Michele A. Carmel
- Unit Production Managers
- Marcus Viscidi
- Richard Wright
- Location Manager
- Boyd Wilson
- Post-production
- Supervisor:
- James McQuaide
- Co-ordinators:
- Winnie Cheng
- Elizabeth Qually
- Assistant Directors
- Peter Kohn
- Scott Robertson
- Gary Romolo Fiorelli
- Script Supervisor
- Barbara E. Tuss
- Casting
- Mali Finn
- Associate:
- Emily Schweber
- Voice:
- Barbara Harris
- Camera Operator
- John Nuler
- Visual Effects
- No Prisoners 3DFX
- Special Effects
- Class 'A' Special Effects Inc
- Graphic Design
- Jason Sweers
- Art Director
- David S. Lazan
- Set Designers
- Noelle King
- Barbara Mesney
- Randall Wilkins
- Set Decorator
- Jan K. Bergstrom
- Costume Designer
- Ruth Myers
- Costume Supervisors
- Michelle Kurpaska
- Michael J. Long
- Supervising Make-up Artist
- Mary Burton
- Supervising Hair Stylists
- Susan Germaine
- Titles/Opticals
- Howard Anderson Company
- Musicians
- Saxophone Solos:
- Dave Roach
- Harmonica Solos:
- Brendan Power
- Guitars:
- Chris Cawte
- Clem Clempson
- John Parricelli
- Bass Guitar:
- Andy Pask
- Percussion:
- Paul Clarvis
- Orchestra Leader:
- Rolf Wilson
- Orchestrations
- Gabriel Yared
- Stéphane Moucha
- Music Supervisors
- Happy Walters
- Gary Jones
- Music Co-ordinator
- David Jordan
- Music Production
- Supervisor:
- Graham Walker
- Co-ordinator:
- Liz Schrek
- Music Editor
- Andrew Dorfman
- Synthesizer Programming/Realisation
- Kirsty Whalley
- Allan Jenkins
- Recordist/Mixer
- John Richards
- Music Consultant
- Robin Urdang
- Soundtrack
- "Boom Boom Ba" - Metisse; "They Say It's Wonderful" - Ethel Merman, Bruce Yarnell; "Can't Stop" - Stan Watson; "Bongo Bong" - Manu Chao; "The Comrads" - The Comrads; "American Pie" - Don Mclean; "In Flight Music" - Paul French; "Steppin' Out with My Baby" - Fred Astaire; "Don't Make Me Love You ('Till I'm Ready)" - Christina Aguilera; "Swayambhu" - Solar Twins; "Trolley Song" - Judy Garland; "Miracle", "I'm Not in Love" - Olive; "This Life" - Mandalay; "Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad" - Moby; "If Everybody Looked the Same" - Groove Armada; "A Simple Toon", "At the Fair" - Andrew Dorfman; "Stars All Seem to Weep" - Beth Orton; "Time Stood Still", "American Pie" - Madonna; "Haven't Got Time for the Pain", "My Blue Heaven" , "Jamuna", "Samacand Alap & Gat"
- Choreography
- Kim Blank
- Sound Mixer
- Douglas Axtell
- Re-recording Mixers
- Dean Humphreys
- Terry Rodman
- Supervising Sound Editor
- Terry Rodman
- Dialogue Editors
- Mildred Iatrou
- Kimberly Lowe Voight
- Sound Effects Co-ordinators
- Daniel R. Chavez
- John Michael Fanaris
- Sound Effects Editors
- Brian T. Best
- Steve Mann
- Steve Nelson
- Additional Sound Effects
- Gary Blufer
- ADR Supervisor
- Becky Sullivan
- Foley
- Supervisor:
- Bob Beher
- Artists:
- Joan Rowe
- Sean Rowe
- Mixer:
- Eric Thompson
- Yoga Consultants
- Kimberly Flynn
- Noah Williams
- Medical Adviser
- Bobbin Bergstrom
- Cast
- Madonna
- Abbie
- Rupert Everett
- Robert
- Benjamin Bratt
- Ben
- Michael Vartan
- Kevin
- Josef Sommer
- Richard Whittaker
- Malcolm Stumpf
- Sam
- Lynn Redgrave
- Helen Whittaker
- Neil Patrick Harris
- David
- Mark Valley
- cardiologist
- Suzanne Krull
- Annabel
- John Carroll Lynch
- Abbie's lawyer
- Fran Bennett
- judge
- Illeana Douglas
- Elizabeth Ryder
- Stacy Edwards
- Finn
- Ricki Lopez
- Angel
- Ramiro Fabian
- Flavio
- Tiffany Paulsen
- young mother
- Joan Axelrod
- Bel Air matron
- George Axelrod
- Bel Air man
- Jack Betts
- Vernon
- William Mesnik
- Ashby
- Irene Roseen
- Lena
- Gavin Lambert
- Ricky
- 'Gangsta' Terrell Anderson
- 'Kmac' Kelly Garmon
- 'Browski' James Reese
- 'Dutch' Amoa Chester
- rappers
- Thomas Bankowski
- Omar
- Glenn Sakazian
- Glen
- Terrance Sweeney
- priest at funeral
- Anna Garduno
- coffee shop waitress
- Frank James
- dad at airport
- Linda Larkin
- Kelly
- Tom Burke
- Tom, Annabel's husband
- Benjamin Koldyke
- Kelly's boyfriend
- Marie Chambers
- Lee Lucas
- Glenn Tannous
- party guests
- Caitlin Wachs
- Rachel
- Maxx Tepper
- Kyle
- Jessica Sara
- kid 3
- Katelin Petersen
- kid 4
- Holly Houston
- Yoga student
- Kimberly Davies
- hostess
- Alvin H. Einbender
- male diner
- Laurent Schwaar
- resturant manager
- Patrick Price
- maitre d'
- Michael Arnon
- waiter
- Jay Karnes
- Kevin's lawyer
- Certificate
- 12
- Distributor
- Buena Vista International (UK)
- 9,707 feet
- 107 minutes 52 seconds
- Dolby Digital/DTS
- Colour by
- DeLuxe