Jared's Pick - Movie Reviews: The Next Best Thing

The Next Best Thing

In my admiration of Madonna (always pronounced as an Italian-accented chant, “Mah-Doan-Ah” as per the rabid European crowds in her Truth or Dare), I bow to no one except, obviously, drama queens. The gay community loves a diva, and VH1’s hackneyed assemblage aside, who is more a diva than Madonna? Of course the gays love her.

Was that last statement too stereotypical for your taste? Then stay away from The Next Best Thing, which, instead of being the subversive portrayal of alternative child rearing it sets out to be, is actually a limply formulaic family drama that supports every criticism of the gay lifestyle the right wing hatemongers love to parrot as well as perpetuating the homo-Sambo (Hombo?) character that middle America loves so dearly. Allow me to explain.

Chris Rock is a wickedly smart and talented comedian, and because he is black, much of his comedy is drawn from that experience - but when he comments on politics, he’s just an observant and funny guy. In the 1920’s, however, the Sambo character would get laughs simply because it was an exaggerated stereotype. The Hombo aesthetic is precisely the same. On NBC’s “Will & Grace”, for example, the character of Jack is genuinely hilarious, and while the majority of his comedy is based around being gay, he is a witty character regardless of his sexuality. He fact that he is gay simply puts a twist on what topics are available for his humor. That’s much different than what happens in, say, The Birdcage, where the theory runs thusly: “Look at me, I’m mega-supra-ultra-gay, and isn’t that funny, in and of itself?” Here’s a tip, y’all: No.

Although The Next Best Thing has good intentions, it unwittingly plays the Hombo card, with all the societal implications thereof. To wit: Gays are fashionable, fit, anti-religious and although are technically Real People Too, are not as fit for parenting as a “normal” couple. For crying out loud, even the title of the movie concedes that having a gay dad is “the next best thing” to a heterosexual family. It also posits what every homophobe secretly suspects - those creepy gays can be persuaded to come back from The Dark Side, even temporarily, if only they could be seduced by someone as sensual as, say, Madonna.

Madonna herself has been capable if not outstanding in some of her previous films, but let’s look at the characters she’s played - a fashionable enigma (Desperately Seeking Susan), a egotistical bad ass (Who’s That Girl), a sultry moll (Dick Tracy) and a woman who fights the odds to rule a country (Evita). Put together, is that a thumbnail sketch of Madonna as we know her or what? Seems that when she plays a headstrong iconoclast, surprise surprise, it works. Here she plays a pushover lame ass chick who has to rely on her gay friend as a sperm stud because she can't keep a man, and it's just as much of a stretch as you'd imagine. Her performance is flat and surprisingly unsexy, which might even count as Acting if it weren’t so boring.

Rupert Everett plays up the FABulous! gay persona he perfected in My Best Friend’s Wedding, but here he also gets to accidentally knock up Madonna and be an Ideal Father to his perfect little boy. The premise is actually promising, but The Next Best Thing avoids any interesting emotional developments - we cut from Madonna’s pregnancy to, no joke, the kid at six years old. How does the couple deal with the introduction of this child into their lives? The movie doesn’t care, dive-bombing directly into cheap sitcom mode so that we can immediately see a Crisis of Passion as Madonna starts to want a Real family for her son, and the inevitable custody battle degenerates into, of all things, a courtroom drama complete with emotional speeches about how parenting is determined by commitment, not zygotes or where you elect to stick your naughty bits.

While I wholeheartedly agree with that sentiment, the film’s didacticism grates after the first hour, and the direction is so relentlessly amateur (featuring the silliest soap opera lighting to hit the big screen in recent memory - Madonna’s dates with her new hetero boyfriend show their faces in shadow with bars of illumination across their eyes, fer crissakes) that it's hard to keep your eyes on the screen for all the rolling in their sockets. If this movie, which is as lifeless and pointless as Madonna's remake of "American Pie," did not a) address a controversial theme and b) star Madonna, it would be virtually any Afterschool Special. 'Nuff said.

- Jared O'Connor

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