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The Next Best Thing
Metascore
25 out of 100

Generally unfavorable - based on 31 Critics

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 3 out of 31
  2. Mixed: 7 out of 31
  3. Negative: 21 out of 31
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  1. Mr. Showbiz
    Reviewed by: F. X. Feeney
    69
    The two leads have a wonderful chemistry together.
  2. Chicago Tribune
    Reviewed by: Michael Wilmington
    63
    All too obvious, all too easy, the sort of tongue-in-chic L.A. comedy that mistakes glibness for high style, heartfelt pop choruses for wisdom.
  3. Charlotte Observer
    Reviewed by: Lawrence Toppman
    63
    Characters behave arbitrarily and incredibly, and a clumsy resolution brings the film to a thudding halt.
  4. New York Daily News
    Reviewed by: Jami Bernard
    50
    Not even Rupert Everett is able to breathe life into soapy Thing.
  5. USA Today
    Reviewed by: Susan Wloszczyna
    50
    Funny how Madonna borrows Everett, Julia Roberts' gay pal from "My Best Friend's Wedding," and Bratt, Roberts' real-life beau, to be her co-stars. If only she could borrow her talent.
  6. Austin Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Marc Savlov
    50
    If only someone had taken away that disastrous third act we'd have one of the better mainstream films dealing with the impossible societal demands put upon gay parenting yet made. No such luck, though.
  7. Seattle Post-Intelligencer
    Reviewed by: William Arnold
    50
    Has good intentions and the element of surprise -- it's never quite clear where it's going at any given point.
  8. Rolling Stone
    Reviewed by: Peter Travers
    50
    Essentially an old-fashioned weepie gussied up for Y2K.
    All this critic's reviews
  9. Entertainment Weekly
    Reviewed by: Steve Daly
    42
    (Madonna is) clearly full of good intentions; too bad she's lacking discernible emotions.
  10. TV Guide
    Reviewed by: Maitland McDonagh
    40
    Cross an episode of "Friends" with an issue-of-the-week movie about gay parenthood and you have this glossy vanity project.
  11. Boston Globe
    Reviewed by: Jay Carr
    38
    Never having decided whether it wants to be comedy or a sentimental hand-wringer, it tries to be both and winds up being neither.
  12. Baltimore Sun
    Reviewed by: Ann Hornaday
    38
    Of Madonna's considerable talents, making the camera love her isn't one: The screen seems to go dead every time she's on it.
  13. Variety
    Reviewed by: Dennis Harvey
    30
    Likely lack of much critical enthusiasm or positive word-of-mouth will induce quick theatrical falloff, with better news likely down the line for rental merchants.
  14. Washington Post
    Reviewed by: Michael O'Sullivan
    30
    Really two movies in one, and there's not enough breathing room for both of them.
  15. Chicago Sun-Times
    Reviewed by: Roger Ebert
    25
    A garage sale of gay issues, harnessed to a plot as exhausted as a junkman's horse.
  16. Christian Science Monitor
    Reviewed by: David Sterritt
    25
    The movie has a well-meaning message about love and loyalty being the bedrock of real family values, but its good intentions sag as the story trades its air of mischievous comedy for trite sentimentality, arbitrary plot twists, and enough maudlin melodramatics to sustain a tabloid TV series.
  17. Miami Herald
    Reviewed by: Rene Rodriguez
    25
    A fluffy, feel-bad drama, with some serious things to say about the viability of homosexual men as fathers and role models.
  18. New York Post
    Reviewed by: Jonathan Foreman
    25
    If the movie were funny, the implicit sermonizing would be more tolerable, but apart from four or five good one-liners, The Next Best Thing is a thudding failure as a comedy.
  19. Philadelphia Inquirer
    Reviewed by: Steven Rea
    25
    Contrived story lines and an altogether phony resolution erase whatever energy and wit the film displayed, leaving the viewer with an empty, disappointed feeling.
  20. San Francisco Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Edward Guthmann
    25
    That's a few too many agendas for one film.
  21. L.A. Weekly
    Reviewed by: Ernest Hardy
    20
    No one ever turns into a real character, and none of the scenes have either dramatic or comedic resonance.
  22. Film.com
    Reviewed by: Ernest Hardy
    20
    Doesn't even rise to the level of camp, of being so-bad-it's-good. It's just flat out bad.
  23. Los Angeles Times
    Reviewed by: Kenneth Turan
    20
    A misguided romantic serio-comedy aimed at women and gay men that ends up caricaturing both.
  24. Newsweek
    Reviewed by: David Ansen
    20
    Screenwriter Ropelewski piles one silly plot contrivance upon another, and the characters start behaving like nitwits.
  25. Chicago Reader
    Reviewed by: Jonathan Rosenbaum
    20
    The whole thing becomes a very rickety and contrived tearjerker.
  26. Portland Oregonian
    Reviewed by: Shawn Levy
    16
    A resolutely awful film, it makes you want to swear off sex, comedy, Rupert Everett movies, flowers, yoga, children, roast beef -- many of the best things in life, in fact.
  27. Salon.com
    Reviewed by: Stephanie Zacharek
    10
    Takes so many wrong turns it's barely an also-ran. It isn't the next best thing at all. Not even close.
  28. Village Voice
    Reviewed by: Dennis Lim
    10
    A vanity project -- hell-bent on playing barely human characters as themselves, they've created something quitebewilderingly ugly in the process.
  29. Dallas Observer
    Reviewed by: Andy Klein
    10
    Nobody involved will want to make this banal "comedy" a highlight of their résumé, not if they have any sense.
  30. Film.com
    Reviewed by: Robert Horton
    10
    A dismal film, a flop as both 21st-century romantic comedy and gay "Kramer vs. Kramer."
  31. The New York Times
    Reviewed by: Stephen Holden
    10
    The moment the movie loses its lighthearted spirit is the moment it loses touch with reality
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