Welcome back to our queer film retrospective, “A Gay Old Time.” In this week’s column, in honor of one very special pop star’s 66th birthday weekend, we’re revisiting 2000’s The Next Best Thing.
This week marks the 66th birthday of the one and only Madonna, who has managed to both create a globe-spanning cultural legacy with a mononymous stage name, and has also cemented herself as one of the greatest icons and allies of our community.
Madge’s career spans dozens of albums and countless songs that make up a large part of the modern pop canon, iconography that has left its indelible stamp on pop culture, relentless activism in favor of the marginalized, and of course, many movie roles. Although her film career (both in front and behind the camera) tends to be more hit-or-miss than her musical output, it’s always been clear that she gives her all to every project she’s a part of… regardless of its audience and critical reception.
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This week, we’ll take a look back at one of her notorious misses, the 2000 romantic comedy The Next Best Thing—a film deeply “of its time,” both in terms of gay rights but also in terms of Madonna’s own persona. That’s because, good intentions aside, its legacy is one that illustrates how misguided a lot of mainstream ideas were about the role of queer people in traditional family units.
The Set-Up
The Next Best Thing follows Abby (Madonna), a recently-dumped yoga teacher who is disillusioned with love and feels that life is slipping through her fingers, and her gay best friend Robert (Rupert Everett), a careless landscaper.
After a drunken night, the two sleep together and Abby soon learns that she is pregnant. They decide to raise the baby together, but when Abby falls in love with a straight man (Benjamin Bratt) years later and tries to move away with their son, the two ensue in a painful custody battle over the child.
The film is directed by John Schlesinger (director of, among others, Best Picture winner Midnight Cowboy and previous entry on this column, Sunday Bloody Sunday), written by Tom Ropelewski (who penned Look Who’s Talking), and features supporting performances by Ileana Douglas, Lynn Redgrave, and a young and twinky Neil Patrick Harris.
Related*
Sensual and mature, this early queer love triangle drama was ahead of its time
‘Sunday Bloody Sunday’ was one of the earliest films to depict bisexuality without making it look duplicitous or promiscuous.
The Parent Trap
But even though it starts out as a rather breezy and light rom-com about two friends in need coming together in rather unusual circumstances, the film turns into a thematically confounding and ill-advised courtroom drama that questions whether gay men can actively and responsibly have a family of their own.
The film has no real idea of who these characters are, and what they want in life seems to fluctuate depending on what the plot requires from them.
Robert starts out as the archetypical gay best friend from any given romantic comedy of the era: a lifelong bachelor with no interest in a relationship or forming a family that only exists to give advice to the straight female protagonist.
Once Abby learns she’s pregnant, he reluctantly agrees to raise the baby with her (after she gives him practically no alternative because she’s certain that this baby will fix her life). But as Robert decides to take on the responsibilities of being a father and a partner, his sole purpose in the movie becomes trying to fit into the mold of the picket fence, nuclear family that he never wanted in the first place.
Mommy Vs. Daddy
When Abby finally finds a suitable romantic partner and leaves to have the life that she actually always wanted, Robert’s refusal to let go of his son are framed as selfish and irrational (it’s even revealed that he may actually not be the father), and his abilities to raise the kid as a gay man are called into question time after time.
Even the ending, in which Abby and Robert decide to split custody, leaves their friendship completely shattered. She got what she wanted, and he is left with practically nothing after being stripped of his agency.
Although the film reflects the very polarizing and complicated politics of being openly gay in the 1990s—and how that might fit into wanting to have a family of our own—it boxes us into playing by straight rules of what a family is and how it should look like: it’s still a man and a woman, it’s still a two-parent household, and if we decide that’s what we want, it’s the thing that our entire existence should revolve around.
The themes are a direct reflection of the time, but the half-baked execution as either a rom-com or a courtroom drama understate any benevolent intentions that the script may have had to paint this in a positive way.
The Next Next Best Thing
Not even the luminous Madonna’s presence in the film can help its case. She and Everett seem to be in autopilot playing the archetypes that they were both most well-known in real life: Madonna as the ultimate woman that is adored and surrounded by gay men, and Everett coming off perhaps the quintessential gay best friend character in film with My Best Friend’s Wedding just a few years before.
The film was a critical bomb upon its release, and was nominated for five Razzie Awards, with Madonna winning Worst Actress. On the other hand, the soundtrack was very well-received, and gave us perhaps the film’s most lasting legacy, Madonna’s cover of “American Pie,” which became a global hit and went number one in many countries.
The Next Best Thing is not a highlight in either the filmography of Madonna (better turn to her early ’90s work for that), gay-straight romantic comedies (better turn to The Object Of My Affection from a few years earlier), or movies about the role of gay men in raising a family (best turn to anything made after the new millennium for that).
But it does prove that Madge has always been there alongside us, rooting and advocating for our community, in the highs and in the lows. This one definitely was a low. Happy birthday, queen, and thank you for everything.
The Next Best Thing is currently only available for digital purchase via Microsoft.
Related*
Turns out, there’s quite a story behind Madonna’s subversive cover of this iconic American pop song
In 2000, Madonna recorded a cover of Don McLean’s “American Pie” to promote the soundtrack to her movie “The Next Best Thing”, co-starring Rupert Everett.
Gabby
She looks gorgeous in this movie though.