A luminous Madonna & a strapping Rupert Everett, yet ‘The Next Best Thing’ was still a rom-com bomb
Welcome back to our queer film retrospective, “A Gay Old Time.” In this week’s column, in honor of one very special pop star’s 66th birthday weekend, we’re revisiting 2000’s The Next Best Thing.This week marks the 66th birthday of the one and only Madonna, who has managed to both create a globe-spanning cultural legacy with a mononymous stage name, and has also cemented herself as one of the greatest icons and allies of our community.Madge’s career spans dozens of albums and countless songs that make up a large part of the modern pop canon, iconography that has left its indelible stamp on pop culture, relentless activism in favor of the marginalized, and of course, many movie roles.
Although her film career (both in front and behind the camera) tends to be more hit-or-miss than her musical output, it’s always been clear that she gives her all to every project she’s a part of… regardless of its audience and critical reception.Subscribe to our newsletter for your front-row seat to all things entertainment with a sprinkle of everything else queer.This week, we’ll take a look back at one of her notorious misses, the 2000 romantic comedy The Next Best Thing—a film deeply “of its time,” both in terms of gay rights but also in terms of Madonna’s own persona.
That’s because, good intentions aside, its legacy is one that illustrates how misguided a lot of mainstream ideas were about the role of queer people in traditional family units.The Next Best Thing follows Abby (Madonna), a recently-dumped yoga teacher who is disillusioned with love and feels that life is slipping through her fingers, and her gay best friend Robert (Rupert Everett), a careless landscaper.
