Rating: 
Summary: The last best thing when it comes to Madonna...
Review: ...but it's a pretty good movie. I know many people will disagreee me, but I thought it was okay. Not great, though. This movie didn't do too well in theaters. Or with the critics. For example, Roger Ebert gave it half a star. The Sacramento Bee gave it two of four stars, calling it a "weird alternative soap opera." I couldn't disagree more. It stars Madonna and Rupert Everett, with Benjamin Bratt. This movie is not for everybody. Like, Madonna and Rupert get drunk and tear the house they're house-sitting apart. Probably noatable.If you can, get the DVD version! Why? Well, you get a music video. That's right, Madonna's "American Pie" video. Personally, I like Madonna's version of "American Pie" more than Don McLean's slow, long, so-so 1970 version. The video is truly great. Although it's not her best vid of the 1990s (that nod goes to the "Ray of Light") it's definetely worth a look. You will not regret these instructions! Movie Grade: B+ DVD Grade: A+ *RJSEASHELL*
Rating: 
Summary: The Next Best Thing (1999)
Review: Some people thought this movie sucked. Man, are they wrong. This movie was excellent. I really enjoyed it. I wasn't too thrilled with Rupert Everett's performance, but Madonna's performance was spectacular, as usual. Madonna plays Abbie Reynolds, a yoga instructer, whose boyfriend has just left her. She goes to her best friend, Robert (played by Rupert Everett) for a way to get over this. One night, the two become lovers. Abbie then finds out that she's pregnant, and Robert is the father. But Robert is also... gay. Seven years later, while getting ready to do a yoga class, Abbie meets Ben, a charming guy who is very interested in Abbie. The two begin dating. Ben decides that he wants to marry Abbie and it makes Robert furious because he does not want anyone taking his place as Sam's father. If any one of you took the advice from the one's who said that this movie sucked, give that advice back. This movie did not suck. It has a real good storyline and it's a movie that everyone can enjoy.
Rating: 
Summary: Not the greatest movie, but not bad.
Review: I generally liked The Next Best Thing. After Evita it wasn't a bad performance from Madonna. As Evita was just singing, of course her performance would be great. However, her acting has been touch and go. Additionally, I never really thought about the male perspective when divorcing females, and hearing how angry they would get about their bi*ch ex-wives. After seeing the scene in the courtroom, I had a new understanding. The only thing unbelievable was Madonna driving away in a Lexus ES300--ya right! Other than that, it was not bad.
Rating: 
Summary: The Next Best Thing was to never have made this film...
Review: In viewing the film, I happened to miss the opening titles, but in sumbmitting this review, I was shocked to find that John Schlesinger, one of my all time favorite directors, had something to do with this nonsense. Plus it hardly has a happy ending. Gay man and straight woman try to raise young son... all is not well on the homefront! Madonna, first off looks horrid. Despite a well toned body, she has become frightening for me to look at. Though her acting is always slightly above average, the trite dialogue is not pulled off by either her or the always fine performances of Rupert Everett. On another note, I'm actually beginning to believe that Neil Patrick Harris is gay. (Didn't he turn up on Will & Grace last season?) This actor is so talented! After all, we all believed that Doogie Howser really WAS a doctor! His emotional performance of a man that looses his lover to AIDS should not go unnoticed. A few years back, there was a film that was similar in subject matter called The Object Of My Affection, with Jennifer Aniston, which ran circles around this movie. Mainly because it included something known as "a good script". Something this film clearly doesn't have. On the plus side, you have to give Schlesinger credit though for bringing to the screen what other directors would never in a million years. Next time John, read the script first.
Rating:
Summary: It Could Have Been A Lot More...
Review: "Chosen Family" is an important concept to gay and lesbian people. Abbie (Madonna), a straight yoga instructor, and Robert (Rupert Everett), a gay landscaper, are best friends and, more importantly, chosen family. They've been through a lot together, so when they have drunken sex one night and Abbie ends up pregnant, they decide to move in together and raise the child together in their own little unconventional family. Neither of them counts on Abbie meeting someone and falling in love. When it happens, things take a nasty turn that ends in the courtroom. As much as I love Madonna, there's a reason why most of her movies flop. With the exception of Evita, she seems to have very bad taste in movie scripts. This one is slightly better than some of her other choices, but it's really not all that special and it can't seem to decide what it wants to be, romantic comedy or serious family drama. Madonna and Rupert never seem to really inhabit their characters. Over all, it's rather depressing. This movie definitely falls far short of what could have been a powerful statement about modern families and gay parents. Not recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Difficult to Empathize with the Characters
Review: With all the star power behind this movie, it should have been executed skillfully, pulling the viewer into the lives of nice people, exploring the novel living arrangements and lifestyles of the main characters, even highlighting what should have been a key, dramatic moment in the movie. Instead, the movie drags on for nearly an hour before we have an inkling of what this movie is really about, and as it drags itself forcefully along we have great difficulty identifying with the characters or their plight. Abbie Reynolds (Madonna) is a woman who hears her biological clock ticking. She wants to meet a nice guy and have one or more children. Failing meeting Mr. Right, she would at least like to have a child. After breaking up with yet another boyfriend, Madonna commiserates with a homosexual friend, Robert Whittaker (Ruppert Everett), and the two end up (good heavens!) doing something sexual together. Soon after, Madonna reveals she is pregnant. Robert decides he wants to be fully involved as Sam's (Malcolm Stumpf) father. Well, time flies and Ben Cooper, excellently played by Benjamin Bratt, enters the picture, quickly falling in love with Abbie. Ben behaves just as we would like or hope he would, and adjusts his life to suit Abbie, Robert and Sam's as much, if not more, than is reasonable. Unfortunately for poor Sam, the relatively immature conflict between Abbie and Sam washes aside all Ben's good deeds and flexibility, and a nasty court battle ensues. I'll not give away the ending or any other details in the event you wish to try the movie yourself. In addition to the star horsepower already mentioned, Lynn Redgrave, Neil Patrick Harris, and Joseph Sommer, all with extensive acting credentials, appear. The director and producer add even more horsepower. The problem is that all this horsepower didn't help me to understand the plot, or empathize with the characters. This movie presented a wonderful opportunity to help explore having a homosexual as a parent, and deal more in depth with the issues of homosexuality and stereotypes surrounding homosexuality. Instead, the movie pays only brief lip service to those issues and some cases opens the door to the issue, and then sweeps it under the rug. In one example, Sam asks Robert about a inappropriate word he heard associated with homosexuals, and what the word meant. Instead of dealing with the issue, the answer was more akin to "babies come from the cabbage patch." If the movie did not want to deal with sensitive issues, it should not have brought them up in the first place. After forcing myself to watch this movie for an hour or more in the hope that it would really take off and make a statement, it devolves into legal bickering between Abbie and Robert, with all sorts of uninteresting confusion thrown in by Ben and an old boyfriend of Abbie's. Instead of a grand statement regarding homosexuals as parents, the movie became just another couple bickering over child custody and I became extremely disappointed with the plot development. Even in the final moments of the movie, the opportunity to do more than have a trite and cliché ending was passed by. There is little more I can say about the ending. The movie is not a total loss. Benjamin Bratt and Malcolm Stumpf have good chemistry during their interactions with others in the movie. Had Benjamin and Malcolm been absent, this movie would have been a total loss. As it is, I rate this movie three stars largely on the basis of the performance of these two actors and what they brought to the movie.
Rating:
Summary: "We Really Messed Up."
Review: It is good that the director John Schlesinger will not be judged by this movie alone since he gave us so many fine movies-- SUNDAY BLOODY SUNDAY, MARATHON MAN, MIDNIGHT COWBOY, FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD, COLD COMFORT FARM, to name a few. Sadly THE NEXT BEST THING does not make the list. So many things are wrong here. For starters, both Madonna and Rubert Everett are terribly miscast, and the screenplay should be rewritten. I have seen the movie three times now, hoping against hope that I can find new things to like in this movie. By far the best thing-- about the only good thing in the movie is the younster who plays Everett and Madonna's child. He's quite wonderful but alone cannot save this movie. For the most part, the lines are trite, the characters are wooden, the older gay men are hopeless stereotypes. Somebody should have told someone, the director, the producer, the actors, that this movie doesn't succeed on any level. Apparently no one was honest enough to say that. Near the end of the movie, Madonna-- well, her name is Abbie, but I'm convinced she is playing herself-- meets up with Everett and says, "We really messed up this time; didn't we?" At last she finally got something right.
Rating:
Summary: Second best, perhaps...
Review: In this attempt to illustrate modern family configurations, 'The Next Best Thing' had a bit too much of an agenda for me. It brings up a lot of issues, most of which more for me make the 'main point' recede into the background. Approaching this as a social concern issue, at different parts of the film I would have different responses. Certain by the end of the film, as the child had come to recognise Robert as 'dad', it would only do harm to the child to break this relationship. However, the question of whether there is a realistic prospect of even the best of friends living together in such a manner as Abbie and Robert, when both are likely (and in fact in the movie, did, albeit rather perfunctorially until the end) to want to continue to have intimate adult relationships before long, no matter how much they subordinate these desires in consideration of the child. It is a family arrangement almost certainly doomed to failure, particularly given Abbie's history of not being able to achieve a successful, sustained relationship. With regard to the film as itself, Rupert Everett is the saving grace of the film. Madonna is not, I think, as bad as many people think, in this film. She does a good and credible job. But her character lacked a multi-dimensionality that the script tried to hide by interjecting diversions (the yoga, the unconventional household arrangement, etc. -- these things are intended to give more 'character' to the Madonna's character, or, like a magician's assistant, divert your attention from the fact there's not much substance there). Everett's character is only somewhat more fleshed out, but only in one real direction. The subplots are, alas, unsuccessful -- we don't get enough detail or enough emotion. Who is this person who died at the beginning? Beyond knowing his family didn't like him until he was dead, and knowing that high liturgical funerals are not to his liking, we don't know much. Yet this is, I believe, supposed to be a critical issue in the film--acceptance of varying styles of families, and the problems that arise from their lack of legal standing. I applaud movies like this that try to combat the various forms of prejudice out there. As non-traditional families become more the norm than the exception, a greater understanding of the people in those relationships is very important. I just wish for better vehicles than this, that have more believable characters (and more fully-human characters) and more credible situations. Overall, I enjoyed the film, and I am a sucker for a happy ending. But, is it happy? When will the relationship with Abbie's husband cease to work out? Will Robert as a single father ever form a successful relationship? Are they still doomed to failure? I doubt a sequel will be produced to answer these questions.
Rating:
Summary: Don't Read The Reviews!
Review: i am not actually a fan of madge although i do hear about her.Anyways, i went into this movie without any exceptation and i was blown away. The movie is awesome. it was stuck in my memory long after i watched it. The emotion and the laughs it brings is real. Madge may not be the best actress in the world but she really hit this movie hard and i prefer to watch it any day than Evita. Pls, don't read the reviews just buy or rent it and you will be surprised.
Rating: 
Summary: If it's not the Worst movie I've ever seen ...
Review: ... then it's cutting it REALLY close. I could go on for hours about how bad this movie is, however, due to my own lack of patience, I'll limit it to just a couple of the most irritating issues. 1. Madonna is absolutely devoid of ANY acting ability whatsoever. 2. The dialogue is just bone dry. Rupet Everett is a very talented actor, and you can tell that he is very clearly the ONLY member of the cast that has even just the ability to inject any life into these hollow shells of characters. 3. The supporting cast was either phoning it in or has nothing to offer. 4. The quasi-British accent Madonna seems to have developed was driving me nuts. YOU'RE NOT FROM LONDON!!! NOBODY'S BUYING IT!!!!!!!!! 5. The movie was unforgivably long. 6. The pace of the script was terrible. It was almost as if the director had actually lost track of time, realized the movie was running long, tried to wrap everything up too quick. The problem with that was the plot of the movie was in such a state of total disarray at that point in the film it was impossible to end comfortably. If he tried to flesh it out, it would have been a three hour film. This whole mess is something I expect to see my wife watching on 'Lifetime,' and if it were in that role they may have been able to turn it into a mini-series and freed their hands a bit with their run time. In that role, it may have been a modest success. That said though, I certainly do not expect this level of dreck coming from a major motion-picture studio. Heed my warning and STAY AWAY!!!!!!!!!!!
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