‘The Next Best Thing’ Holds Little Consolation

Trying to cheer up gay best pal Robert (Rupert Everett) after the AIDS-related deathof one of his friends, Abbie (Madonna) takes a kitchen moment in “The Next Best Thing” to say she knows just what she wants in the way of funeral arrangements. “Cut me up,” she says gaily, “and stuff me in this freezer next to those frozen pizzas for the next 100 years.”

Any room in that freezer for this inadequate, inauthentic, indigestible film? Chopped up or whole, that’s where it belongs.

A misguided romantic serio-comedy aimed at women and gay men that ends up caricaturing both, “The Next Best Thing” takes what could have been a real situation and fills it with bogus, badly written moments. And its sourness about human relationships is remarkable in a film that’s nominally celebrating inclusiveness and new kinds of families.

While Everett and Madonna, good friends in real life, have been eager to work together, the pairing does credit to neither one. Playing an ordinary citizen (albeit one described as “smart, beautiful, a good cook and great in bed”), Madonna is less believable than she was as a dictator’s wife (“Evita”) or a wax-dripping dominatrix (“Body of Evidence”).

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The plain truth is that being a convincing actress is not among Madonna’s considerable talents, and, in a kind of Gresham’s Law of Cinema, her deficiencies are a drag on the good work of Everett, usually one of the most charming and irresistible of actors. But not here.

On the other hand, Madonna is as much a victim as her co-star is of Thomas Ropelewski’s trite script and John Schlesinger’s disconnected direction. How much could any actress do with lines like “I’m cowering behind a flowerpot in my courtyard”? As for Schlesinger, who’s made some of the most memorable films of the past decades (“Midnight Cowboy,” “Darling”) and some of the least (“Honky Tonk Freeway,” “Madame Sousatzka,” “Pacific Heights”), his emotional tone-deafness brings to mind director Arthur Hiller’s late, unlamented “Making Love.”

“The Next Best Thing” opens with a standard cross-cutting introduction of Robert and Abbie at their respective occupations. He’s a handsome L.A. landscape architect and she’s a supple yoga instructor who’s not above baby-sitting her students’ children while she’s teaching a class.

Herself a committed yoga student and workout fiend (the film provides some discreet glimpses of the results of her dedication), Madonna has to pretend to be a woman worried about being too old and over the hill to attract and hold a man. Typecasting this is not.

While Abbie’s in the dumps about the breakup of her latest relationship with music business hotshot Kevin (Michael Vartan) and Robert’s mourning the death of his friend, the two spend an inebriated Fourth of July together and end up having sex just as the fireworks go bang. (No, I am not making this up.)

Naturally, Abbie gets pregnant, and when she decides to keep the baby it’s Robert who’s faced with a decision. Should he commit to full-time parenthood with Abbie or should he have a V-8? His gay friends, her female friends, his barely there parents (Lynn Redgrave and Josef Sommer) all have different opinions, but Robert agrees with the person who says, “There’s a certain crazy logic to this,” and decides to seize the opportunity and create a new style of family unit.

Even at these preliminary stages, when everything is light and fluffy, no one seems to realize how callow and unappealingly self-absorbed these characters tend to play. Abbie gets drunk and encourages Robert to completely wreck his employers’ house, but we’re supposed to be charmed by their insouciance. Ditto when Robert pretends to be an effeminate queen to completely humiliate Abbie’s ex, guilty only of breaking up with her. How completely amusing. It’s a tendency that only gets worse.

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Six years now pass so magically that, though neither Abbie nor Robert look as much as a single day older, in the blink of an eye they now have a handsome young son (Malcolm Stumpf). Robert, who has had boyfriends, tells Abbie to do the same. “You’re not just a mother,” he says with a straight face, “you’re a woman.” Later, Abbie pulls at the skin around her eyes to see if she can make her wrinkles disappear. Unfortunately for the scene’s dramatic punch, the camera hasn’t allowed her to have any in the first place.

Then, mistaking her mellow ashram for a power gym, handsome Ben (“Law & Order’s” Benjamin Bratt) walks into Abbie’s life. He’s a hotshot New York investment banker out on the coast to close a big deal. Suddenly these unlikely love birds have eyes only for each other. But what about Robert? Has anyone thought about him? Has anyone thought about anything except him or herself?

“The Next Best Thing” has designs on getting serious at this point, but because it’s neglected to put in any kind of foundation the story can’t bear the additional weight.

With characters so reluctant to consider other points of view, it’s difficult to even pretend to care as they get loud and unpleasant and cope with fake crises and even more fake resolutions.

It’s like watching an “Afterschool Special” trying to transform itself into “The Sopranos.” Not in this lifetime.

* MPAA rating: PG-13, for mature thematic elements, sexual content, partial nudity and language. Times guidelines: It’s all extremely genteel.

‘The Next Best Thing’

Madonna: Abbie

Rupert Everett: Robert

Benjamin Bratt: Ben

Michael Vartan: Kevin

Josef Sommer: Richard Whittaker

Lynn Redgrave: Helen Whittaker

A Lakeshore Entertainment production, released by Paramount. Director John Schlesinger. Producers Tom Rosenberg, Leslie Dixon, Linne Radmin. Executive producers Gary Lucchesi, Ted Tannebaum, Lewis Manilow. Screenplay Thomas Ropelewski. Cinematographer Elliot Davis. Editor Peter Honess. Costumes Ruth Myers. Music Gabriel Yared. Production design Howard Cummings. Art director David S. Lazan. Set decorator Jan K. Bergstrom. Running time: 1 hour, 47 minutes.

In general release throughout Southern California.