It’s a rich subject for a movie but the glossy, schizoid “The Next Best Thing” has little clue what to do with it. Initially, John Schlesinger’s movie aims for romantic-comedy insouciance. This is a tone Everett could master in his sleep, but Madonna, for all her other talents, has never been an effortless screen presence. She acts as if she were pumping iron–with grim determination. The two stars may be great pals in life, but there’s little magic in their on-screen partnership.
For the first six years, Abbie and Robert’s design for living is a smashing success. (The messy early years of their son’s life disappear in an abrupt cut from Sam’s birth to his 5th birthday.) So where’s the dramatic conflict? It arrives, with a vengeance, in the form of nice investment banker Ben (Benjamin Bratt), a very slick but none-too-interesting fellow who falls in love with Abbie and threatens to take her and the boy with him to New York. Devoted dad Robert freaks; suddenly (and implausibly) a thin but amiable comedy morphs into a courtroom custody-case tear-jerker. From this point on screenwriter Thomas Ropelewski piles one silly plot contrivance upon another, and the characters start behaving like nitwits. Why don’t these old and true friends work out a compromise? Silly question. If they did, the movie wouldn’t have a third act.
