The Next Best Thing casts Madonna as a free spirited soul (some stretch of casting there) who has a one night stand with an old friend and soul mate Rupert Everett. But that's not likely to happen too often as Everett is a gay man with whom she confides her innermost.

I think Everett's character must have been based on Roddy McDowall who was a confidante to many of the rich and glamorous and unlike that other gay man who did that as well, Truman Capote, McDowall never wrote any tell all memoirs.

It rarely happens in real life, but a blessed event came from that mating and Madonna and Everett decide to move in together, not marry, but raise the child as a mother and father with each leading their separate lives. It actually does work for a while.

Madonna really gets into the mother role and Everett's a great father figure. But he never forgets his social life with friends and lovers like Neil Patrick Harris and Mark Valley.

But then Madonna meets Benjamin Bratt who wants to get married and that puts an end to the arrangements.

The Next Best Thing while a sincere effort in its own way of showing the complicated problems that gays and lesbians have with the raising of children, their own children at that, it sadly degenerates into the kind of soap opera that one finds on the Lifetime Channel. It's not a horrible film, just will never be on anyone's ten best list.

It's 1992. Abbie Reynolds (Madonna) is an L.A. yoga teacher. Her best friend Robert Whittaker (Rupert Everett) is gay. She gets dumped by music producer boyfriend Kevin Lasater (Michael Vartan). They go to the funeral of their friend David (Neil Patrick Harris)'s gay partner Joseph. Abbie wants a baby and Robert assists during one drunken night. She gets pregnant. His father (Josef Sommer) is angry while his mother (Lynn Redgrave) is happy. Abbie and Robert decide to raise the baby together. As their boy Sam grows up, their simple arrangement gets less simple. Sam has questions. Abbie starts dating perplexed Ben Cooper (Benjamin Bratt). Robert hires Elizabeth Ryder (Illeana Douglas) to sue for custody.

This should be a drama. There seems to be a desire for this to be a comedy but the subject matter does not allow the funny. At best, this could be Kramer vs Kramer and I can't see how that could be accomplished either. It's really a hopeless case and Madonna does not help. They could rewrite this a million more times and it still won't work. It's all problematic and the child seems to be lost in the mayhem.

Firm-bodied California yoga teacher Madonna (as Abbie Reynolds) suffers the end of a relationship, which is sad because she is getting older and wants to have a baby. Her gay landscaper pal Rupert Everett (as Robert Whittaker) suggests Madonna become a single mom through anonymous fertilization, but she wants a love child. Being best friends, they have too much to drink one night and copulate. Madonna learns she is pregnant. She and Mr. Everett decide to live together and raise their son, who very quickly grows into Malcolm Stumpf (as Sam)...

All goes well until Madonna attracts reluctant yoga student Benjamin Bratt (as Ben Cooper). Now a foursome, the cast has a problem because Mr. Bratt, a self-described workaholic, has to move east for a better job position. He could live luxuriously as a California yoga teacher, but whatever... This well-intentioned story, unfortunately the last film directed by John Schlesinger, is more concerned with how to present a seemingly self-absorbed star than it is with filmmaking. Everett should have taken the kid and moved in with Neil Patrick Harris (as David).

**** The Next Best Thing (3/3/00) John Schlesinger ~ Madonna, Rupert Everett, Benjamin Bratt, Malcolm Stumpf