Product: The Next Best Thing (2000)
Rating: 1.0
Muddled and Confused accent , acting and movie. -5
OMG. This movie is a -5Madonnas ridiculous half British accent is beyond annoying.If the people working with her had any kind of balls they would of told her she sounds like an idiot.The director should of forced her to clean this up.Brit's everywhere cringe at it and as a yank who knows accents and has many British friends I was disgusted at the pompous mixed up cadence in her affected wannabe fake accent.Now that I got that out of my system, the acting in this movie is so bad, they should show it at acting schools on what not to do.So wooden, her timing is awful. My gosh her voice is so flat and monotone.She did seem to suddenly lose her accent in the scenes with just her and the kid and was not bad.She made sure she looked good in every scene, and like someone else said the lighting man must of been paid extra to give her soft golden light no matter what the scene was.Also rather gagging was the way everyone keeps telling her how beautiful and wonderful she is???What was that all about?It rang hollow and contrived to say the least.Rupert did the best with what he had, the little boy was pretty good and Benjamin Bratt was the most believable thing in the whole movie.(except when he told her he loved her!)Then when she just moves out and takes the boy, it gets ugly.(ier)It is very cliched and gay bashing, like sterotype statements about being gay and from people who oppress the gays.It seems very 1980-early 90's, move on already.Lawyers and judges in NY would of never said that stuff. Then when Rupert makes his speech saying"It seems all I do is worry about blood, my whole life is about blood" What is that?Many people have already told the twist in here, but they really messed up by making the kid not really his.What a mess this movie is. It never seemed to decide what it was trying to say or be. Comedy? Drama? New family roles? Sell out at the end?It did keep my attention for a few hours on TV, where it seemed like it should of been in the first place, (total lifetime movie and a bad one)The ending is so abrupt I think the producers knew it was unfixable.Watching the actors muddle through this mess was entertaining in it's own sick way! Now I feel like watching a real movie to get rid of the taste of this one.