Dallas Voice (Dallas, Tex.), Vol. 16, No. 44, Ed. 1 Friday, March 3, 2000 Page: 36 of 102
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It's like a sweeps stunt. Imagine NBC combin-
ing Will <& Grace and Law & Order for special
episodes, and the result would be something
like The Next Best Thing — only better.
Of course the movies value starpower over
talent, so Will — er, Robert — is played by
Rupert Everett and Grace/ Abbie by Madonna.
Actually Robert is Will and Jack rolled into
one, and there's no sign of the much-needed
Karen. Like Will and Grace, gay Robert and
straight Abbie are longtime best friends who
tell each other everything and offer a shoulder
to cry on when things are bad. When there are
no men in their lives they have each other.
And like Will and Grace they're very phys-
ical with each other. One drunken evening (the
Fourth of July, complete with symbolic fire-
works) their intimacy leads exactly where your
parents warned you it would before you came
out — and where they hoped it would lead
afterward. Furujy, Abbie just got through say-
ing in a panic attack about her biological clock,
"I wanna have a baby with someone I love."
A few weeks later she tells Robert, "I'm
pregnant with your baby," and offers him the
. option of being as involved as he wants to be.
He opts for full involvement short of marriage
and moves in with her.
"He'll do all the things a husband would,"
Abbie tells her circle of friends, one of whom
responds, "Including not sleep with you."
"Will he be gay?" another friend asks about the
unborn child. Abbie gives her an exasperated
look and says, "Will your kids be stupid?"
We're spared Sam's first five or six years,
having seen enough cute baby shots during
the credit sequence. But the actor, Malcolm
Stumpf, looks and acts every bit of his real-life
eight years when the story resumes. Robert,
Abbie and Sam are a happy, loving family,
except that the parents have separate bed-
rooms.
Now 40-ish, Robert dates men but is too
devoted to his son to become seriously
involved. And Abbie hasn't found a man to
interest her in some time. As in the far superi-
or The Object of My Affection, a man finally
comes between the loving friends. It's Ben
Cooper (Benjamin Bratt), an investment
banker who stumbles into Abbie's yoga class
and into her heart.
Robert begins acting irrationally at his first
meeting with the potential homewrecker.
When Abbie and B£n announce their engage-
ment, and that Ben's job may make them move
across the country, Robert flips out completely.
To make a long story a lot shorter than it seems
on screen, a custody battle ensues and much of
the rest of the film takes place in courtrooms
and law offices. But despite Bratt's
presence it's less like Law & Order and
more like any daytime soap you care to
name. Like any such fight it brings out
the worst in both parties, but a major
revelation that loses Robert legal
ground gains him audience sympathy.
Released the weekend before
Californians vote on the Knight
Initiative, restating the definition of
marriage as being between a man and a
woman, if The Next Best Thing isn't an
infomercial designed to make fence-sit-
ters more accepting of gay people, it's
the next best thing. And apparently if
we can't gain acceptance we'll settle for
the next best thing: pity.
When one of Sam's friends tells him
his father may be a "faggot" and Sam
inquires, Robert explains, "'Faggot' is a
mean word mean people use when
they don't want to accept people who
are different from them."
Director John Schlesinger, an old-
school homosexual, doesn't seem to
think modem audiences will believe a man is
gay if he simply says so, so he brings in most
of the cliches and stereotypes of the last half-
century, from limp wrists and showtunes to an
AIDS funeral. The latter scene makes a heavy-
handed point about the dead man's blood fam-
ily shutting out the man he lived with (Neil
Patrick Harris), but ends touchingly as the
widow, with a little help from his friends,
asserts himself.
It's hard to believe this is the same
Schlesinger who directed Midnight Cowboy and
Sunday Bloody Sunday — and far more recently
Cold Comfort Farm — until you remember he
also made Eye for an Eye, the Sally Field-as-vig-
Ben Cooper (Benjamin Bratt, top) is an
attractive banker who threatens to break
up Abbie and Robert's idyllic household.
ilante movie.
Men don't swap spit in The Next Best Thing
but Robert is seen in bed with another man,
not touching but presumably naked under the
covers — a fair compromise to get a PG-13 rat-
ing and potentially get the film's message out
to younger viewers.
While Madonna has made sure the other
women in the picture (except Lynn Redgrave,
who plays Robert's mother and is old enough
not to be competition) are either bland or
downright homely, Everett shows a refreshing
lack of ego by sharing the screen with Bratt.
I'm a charter member of the Bratt Pack, having
fallen for the guy when I interviewed him in
Abbie (Madonna) and Robert (Rupert
verett) are longtime best friends, nei*
ther of whom can find a good man.
One night, after too many drinks, the
two get physically affectionate.
1991. And while he never looks as good on
screen as he does in person, he has a scene in
his underwear that's enough eye candy to
choke on.
Madonna's best screen performance was in
Evita, which was essentially a longform music
video made up of such short takes that she
only had to pose, not act. Here the middle-
aged starlet poses again, often with sprayed-
on tears, but she's called on to act and react in
actual conversations. It doesn't bode well for
her film career. Everett has far more basic skill
with which to transcend the material, but
Thomas Ropelewski's script ultimately does
him in. Between being a device to serve the
needs of each scene and being a representative
of all gay men, Robert has precious little time
to be a person.
Though it tries to piggyback on the success
of Will & Grace, The Next Best Thing is more like
the final season of Ellen, when the show was so
busy making points it forgot to be funny.
There's a lot to be said for good intentions, but
they don't photograph well. T
Opens today in wide release.
The Next Best Thing ★★ [out of four)
Starring Rupert [verett anil Madonna
Directed by John Schlesinger
HIV HELPLINE I - -
mrnrn
Your direct link to HIV/AIDS sendees throughout North Texas
free, anonymous answers to your questions
This program funded in part with Federal funds (Ryan White). AIDS IbJ
where to go for help ,«» "ES°u"c,i.
of funds come horn other sources, primarily donations. 11 vJ |
36 MARCH 3, 2000
DALLAS VOICE
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Vercher, Dennis. Dallas Voice (Dallas, Tex.), Vol. 16, No. 44, Ed. 1 Friday, March 3, 2000, newspaper, March 3, 2000; Dallas, Texas. (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth615497/m1/36/: accessed April 25, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries Special Collections.