Let’s make one thing clear: The Next Best Thing is not the next best anything. It’s not the next best rom-com, not the next best Madonna film (yes, even Swept Away looks slightly more coherent in hindsight), and certainly not the next best career move for the late, once-glorious John Schlesinger. Watching this 2000 misfire unfold is like watching a three-legged race between a 1970s Oscar-winning director, a charisma-deficient Rupert Everett, and a Madonna performance held together by chewing gum, false eyelashes, and ego.
This is a romantic comedy-drama for people who hate romance, can’t stand comedy, and are deeply allergic to drama. It’s like if Kramer vs. Kramer had been rewritten by a hungover yoga instructor who binge-watched Will & Grace and said, “Let’s make it more heterosexual—but not too much!”
🧘♀️ The Plot (Allegedly)
Meet Abbie (Madonna), a yoga instructor with the personality of a beige throw pillow who is “quirky” in that way Hollywood loves to market—meaning she wears scarves, owns candles, and occasionally blurts out things no real human would say. She’s best friends with Robert (Rupert Everett), a gay landscape designer whose entire personality is built around being English, sarcastic, and mildly annoyed.
One night, after a few too many cosmos and some half-baked navel-gazing about their lonely single lives, they drunkenly hook up and—boom!—she gets pregnant. Because in 2000, all gay men are secretly fertile, and all yoga instructors are ovulating when the plot needs them to.
They decide to raise the child together. So far, so awkwardly progressive. But then Abbie falls in love with a straight-laced businessman (Benjamin Bratt, whose agent clearly lost a bet), and what began as a bland sitcom premise collapses into a courtroom custody battle dumber than a daytime soap and twice as melodramatic.
🧊 Madonna: Cold as Ice, Still Somehow Melting
Look, Madonna is a pop icon. She gave us “Like a Prayer,” cone bras, and the illusion that she could act. But in The Next Best Thing, she delivers every line like she’s reading it off the back of a perfume bottle. She stares blankly, emotes like a malfunctioning Roomba, and makes you long for the nuanced depth of a department store mannequin.
She’s supposed to be vibrant, compassionate, confused—torn between the father of her child and the new man in her life. But she’s about as torn as a napkin in a wind tunnel. Every romantic moment is DOA. Every emotional beat lands with the thud of a dropped yoga block.
If this film were trying to convince us Madonna could carry a serious drama, it fails harder than her fake British accent.
🎩 Rupert Everett: Polished, But Pointless
Everett, as Robert, does his best. He’s charming in that self-loathing, dry-as-a-martini way, and he’s got chemistry with Madonna… if you imagine them as distant cousins forced to share an Uber. He’s meant to be the heart of the film—sensitive, sassy, suffering—but the script gives him little to work with beyond smug one-liners and weepy stares across playgrounds.
Robert’s descent from supportive co-parent to jealous, litigious mess happens so fast it’s like the film skipped a reel. One minute he’s the lovable gay best friend; the next, he’s dragging Madonna to court and hurling accusations like it’s the third act of a Law & Order episode directed by a coked-out screenwriter.
💔 Benjamin Bratt: Handsome, Wooden, Misused
Bratt plays the romantic interloper, Steve—a man so bland he makes instant oatmeal seem spicy. His character’s only purpose is to provide a “straight” contrast to Robert’s gay co-parenting. But instead of adding drama, he just eats up screen time like a beige ghost with great cheekbones.
He wants a “traditional family,” which in movie code means: “remove the gay from the parenting equation.” This predictable conflict fuels the film’s half-hearted courtroom twist, but by then we’ve already lost all emotional investment. Honestly, the only good decision Steve makes is storming out of a dinner party—mainly because it’s one less person in the room prolonging the agony.
⚖️ The Courtroom Climax: Drama for Dummies
If you thought Kramer vs. Kramer was a moving depiction of two adults trying to do what’s best for a child, The Next Best Thing laughs in your face and throws a sippy cup at your head. The custody battle arrives with all the subtlety of a car crash. What could have been a thoughtful exploration of modern families becomes a showcase for Madonna’s inability to cry on cue.
Everyone is overacting like their mortgage depends on it. The judge looks like he’s waiting for a sandwich. The child is passed around like a plot device in Velcro shoes. And Madonna gives a closing speech so hollow, so painfully rehearsed, you start rooting for the bailiff to step in and end it all.
🎶 The Soundtrack: Madonna’s Ego in C Minor
Oh yes. Did I mention Madonna does the soundtrack? Because of course she does. Every scene is scored like it’s an awards show montage, with Madge crooning generic adult-contemporary ballads over slow-motion montages of swingsets, car rides, and tragic yoga gazes. It’s the auditory equivalent of being trapped in an elevator with a self-published motivational speaker.
🧽 Direction: Schlesinger’s Farewell Flop
It’s almost tragic that The Next Best Thing was the final feature film by John Schlesinger—the man behind Midnight Cowboy and Sunday Bloody Sunday. But it also explains a lot. The film feels like the work of someone desperately trying to understand a modern world that has long since left him behind.
There’s no bite. No insight. No subtlety. Just cliché after cliché, stacked like tofu bricks in a Whole Foods display of Progressive Family Dynamics™. Schlesinger, once a pioneer of emotional complexity, goes out here like a man filming through a fogged lens.
🗑 Final Thoughts: The Next Best Skip
The Next Best Thing wanted to be brave, edgy, even heartwarming. What it became was a two-hour Hallmark card written by a focus group and directed by someone who probably wished he was still filming Jon Voight in Times Square.
It tries to say something about families, sexuality, love, and parenthood—but it fumbles every message with the grace of a toddler in tap shoes. What’s left is a clunky, misguided attempt at relevance, starring a pop legend who can’t act, a script that can’t focus, and a director who should’ve bowed out one film earlier.
Rating: 1.5 out of 5 Accidental Pregnancies
If this is the next best thing, then I’ll happily take the third, fourth, or fifth option—so long as it doesn’t involve Madonna delivering monologues like she’s reading a cereal box.
