The Next Best Thing film review

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THE NEXT BEST THING

Yoga instructor Abbie (Madonna) and gay gardener Robert (Rupert Everett) are best friends who rely on each other to get through the occasional ups and downs of their busy and strangely glamorous Los Angeles lives. When Abbie's beau Kevin (Michael Vartan) packs his bangs and heads for the hills - well, a bachelor pad across town - Robert employs his boundless good humour and Judy Garland record collection to lift her spirits. And when he attends the funeral of a close friend, she stands loyally by his side, leading the mourners through an a cappella version of "American Pie''.

Abbie and Robert are joined at the hip and do everything as a couple including - one very drunken night - sleep together, leaving Abbie pregnant.

Having overcome their initial shock, the pair begin making plans to raise the child, much to the horror of friends and family who sense impending doom.

At first, they prove to be model parents, especially Robert who devotes most of his time to bringing up their son Sam (Malcolm Stumpf) while Abbie is at work. Trouble inevitably rears its ugly head in paradise - just as everyone had predicted - when Abbie falls head over heels for hunky investment banker Ben (Benjamin Bratt).

Robert is consumed with jealousy, forced to compete for Abbie's time and affections, and his mood darkens even more when he learns that Robert and Abbie plan to move to New York, and take Sam with them. Legal knives are duly sharpened as mother and father seek custody in the courts, each one attempting to prove that they are the most responsible guardian for the little boy.

Splicing the comedy of My Best Friend's Wedding with the emotional traumas of Kramer vs Kramer, The Next Best Thing is a catalogue of disasters from beginning to end. The film's intentions are honourable, examining the timely issue of parent rights for gay men, but fails to treat the subject with a modicum of intelligence, casually throwing the subject into the already bland mix.

Performances are excruciating - it's amateur hour everybody! - with Madonna delivering all of her lines in the same monotonous, lifeless tone (her London twang comes through loud and clear) and Everett amping his camp histrionics to full volume. Neither character is remotely likeable or well developed: on this evidence, the courts would probably take little Sam into care and save his from his parents' endless melodramas.