The Next Best Thing: Critic Reviews

100%

MovieWeb: 0 reviews

19%

RottenTomatoes: 50 reviews

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Stephen Holden New York Times (Top Critic)

10

The moment the movie loses its lighthearted spirit is the moment it loses touch with reality.
Full Review » 12 years ago
Michael O'Sullivan Washington Post (Top Critic)

30

Two movies in one, and there's not enough breathing room for both of them.
Full Review » 12 years ago
Jay Carr Boston Globe (Top Critic)

Never having decided whether it wants to be comedy or a sentimental hand-wringer, it tries to be both and winds up being neither.
Full Review » 12 years ago
Jami Bernard New York Daily News (Top Critic)

Madonna has presence and grace, but her lines come out as if they've been practiced too many times in front of the mirror (in a quasi-British accent, no less).
Full Review » 12 years ago
Philip Wuntch Dallas Morning News (Top Critic)

Terminally slow-moving.
Full Review » 12 years ago
Steven Rosen Denver Post (Top Critic)

When one of an alleged romantic movie's principal actors is basically just reading lines, it doesn't do much for chemistry.
Full Review » 12 years ago
Jonathan Foreman New York Post (Top Critic)

25

There hasn't been a Hollywood 'message' movie as smug or cheesy as The Next Best Thing in quite a while.
Full Review » 12 years ago
Jay Boyar Orlando Sentinel (Top Critic)

After the melodrama kicks in, the film turns disastrously sappy.
Full Review » 12 years ago
Ernest Hardy Film.com (Top Critic)

She's awful. But to be fair, so is everything else about the movie.
Full Review » 12 years ago
Stephanie Zacharek Salon.com (Top Critic)

Madonna's charisma as a personality has never translated particularly well to the big screen.
Full Review » 12 years ago
Kenneth Turan Los Angeles Times (Top Critic)

20

Any room in that freezer for this inadequate, inauthentic, indigestible film?
Full Review » 12 years ago
Jeffrey M. Anderson Combustible Celluloid

The very first scene in the new Madonna movie The Next Best Thing stumbles and the movie never recovers.
Full Review » 6 years ago
Frank Swietek One Guy's Opinion

0

This astonishingly bad tearjerker, a Fannie Hurst weepie with a gay twist, is as phony as a three-dollar bill and just about as entertaining.
Full Review » 6 years ago
Eric Monder Film Journal International

Well-intentioned but heavy-handed.
Full Review » 10 years ago
Roger Ebert At the Movies

25

Madonna never emerges as a plausible human being in the movie; she's more like a spokeswoman for a video on alternative parenting lifestyles.
Full Review » 12 years ago
Wesley Morris San Francisco Examiner

It's so weirdly acted, shot, edited, directed, written and scored you can't believe it's happening -- though, on a gut level, it is enjoyable in the way that certain forms of masochism are enjoyable.
Full Review » 12 years ago
David Elliott San Diego Union-Tribune

Madonna has little charisma as a movie performer.
Full Review » 12 years ago
F.X. Feeney Mr. Showbiz

The two leads have a wonderful chemistry together.
Full Review » 12 years ago
Rene Rodriguez Miami Herald

Preposterous? Yes. Ridiculous? That, too.
Full Review » 12 years ago
Todd Anthony South Florida Sun-Sentinel

If you thought Madonna's singing was flat, wait until you see how listlessly she delivers her lines in this film.
Full Review » 12 years ago
Maitland McDonagh TV Guide's Movie Guide

60

Its greatest liability, unfortunately, is Madonna.
Full Review » 12 years ago
Glenn Whipp Los Angeles Daily News

The screenplay by Thomas Ropelewski is such a ridiculous hodgepodge of cliches with stale political correctness that Meryl Streep would have a difficult time making it work.
Full Review » 12 years ago
Rob Blackwelder SPLICEDWire

50

Its creaky, all-consuming insistence on its characters' normalcy entombs everything interesting about them in contrived schlock and transparent gloss-over techniques.
Full Review » 12 years ago
(CNN.com) Paul Clinton CNN.com

A pleasing but mindless diversion that goes down well with buttered popcorn and a large Coke.
Full Review » 12 years ago
Chuck Walton Hollywood.com

80

Its performances are appealing, and its heart's in the right place.
Full Review » 12 years ago