Product: The Next Best Thing (2000)
Rating: 4.0
Why not.
I watched this flick when it first came out in year 1999. I can't be bothered by the Academy winning director. And I couldn't bother the DVD until I realised the special features include a video of the soundtrack: AMERICAN PIE. Like our spotlight reviewer Ruma, I grab it since I really like most of the music videos by Madonna. AMERICAN PIE is as great as melancholy to look at.Industrially speaking, this film was released in a "smart" timing (Thanks to Rupert Everett who claims to have brought the script to his friend Madonna). Cinema-goers were terribly missing that kind of gay-straight friendship chemistry after MY BEST FRIEND'S WEDDING. Benjamin Bratt was dating Julia Roberts. And Madonna, what can I say, as usual was desperately in need for the next best surprise at all her risk for her Hollywood status. So no matter how bad we know who can or cannot act sometimes, we still queued up in the movie liners then.It also doesn't matter how this film did not example a good ending for the moral of gay-parenting. Sam (the biological son of Abbie and her ex lived-in Kelvin) is taken care of and loved and will always remember that the gay man Robert has been the father from the very beginning. So blood is thicker but doesn't count in this circumstance.