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THE NEXT BEST THING |
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Madonna,
Rupert Everett
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| Note
to Madonna: If and when you make another movie -- and judging from your
latest, you should quit while you're behind -- don't embrace a story that
markedly more talented actresses have tackled before you. |
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 I'm
talking, of course, about Hollywood's latest stock scenario, inwhich a gay
guy and a hetero gal match wits as a fabulously odd couple. The town can't
stop cloning the idea, thanks to the appeal Julia Roberts exuded opposite
the equally appealing Rupert Everett in ''My Best Friend's Wedding.'' The
territory has been reworked with varying results in ''The Object of My Affection,''
with Jennifer Aniston playing an improbably unattached pregnant woman longing
for her gay best buddy, and the NBC comedy ''Will & Grace,'' where the titular
just-bitchy-pals couple is so colorless, the show should be handed over
to their sidekicks and retitled ''Jack & Karen.''
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| In the
newest and certainly flimsiest branch of this post-nuclear-family tree,
''The Next Best Thing,'' Everett stars as a cattier, less elegant version
of the best friend he played in ''Wedding.'' He's Robert, a perfectly chiseled
landscaper whom we're supposed to believe can't even ''conceive'' of having
a meaningful relationship with another man. Instead, he finds fulfillment
after he gets tipsy and accidentally fathers a son with the serially single
Abbie (Madonna). |
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| The drunken
buildup to their fateful sex act, full of wince-inducing pratfalls as they
topple and smash the belongings of the fastidious gay couple whose house
they're swanning around in, plays like a strange homage to 1930s musicals.
And like the leading lady in some '40s tearjerker, Robert gives up the trappings
of what he considers an oh-so-empty lifestyle to help raise little Sam (charming
newcomer Malcolm Stumpf), only to end up in a nasty custody battle once
Abbie gets engaged to a hunky businessman (a suave Benjamin Bratt). |
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| Director
John Schlesinger, a long way from his late-'60s career highs of ''Darling''
and ''Midnight Cowboy,'' dutifully frames Madonna's figure in many an admiring
long shot. But when he comes in for gauzy close-ups, she can barely muster
even the rudiments of human expression. Whether she's laughing, crying,
or, in her best scene, wistfully assaying herself in a mirror as she pulls
her breasts and her eyes taut against signs of aging (''1989,'' she says,
then ''1999'' as she lets go), her face remains a hapless blank. She's clearly
full of good intentions; too bad she's lacking discernible emotions. |
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| Grade:
C- |
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| -- Steve
Daly |
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| from:
Entertainment Weekly Online |
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© 2000
IHTML & Maria Jose All Rights Reserved.
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