The Next Best Thing (2000)

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General		Extras
Category	Romantic Comedy	None
Rating
Year Of Production	2000
Running Time	103:23
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	2,4	Directed By	John Schlesinger
Studio Distributor	Warner Home Video	Starring	Rupert Everett Madonna Benjamin Bratt Michael Vartan Josef Sommer Lynn Redgrave
Case	Amaray-Transparent
RPI	$36.95	Music	Gabriel Yared

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 5.0 (384Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.85:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	1.85:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English English for the Hearing Impaired Swedish Norwegian Danish Finnish	Smoking	Yes
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    The Next Best Thing starts out with Abbi being dumped by her long-time boyfriend and then moves on to the funeral of a friend. Not wanting to be alone, Robert asks Abbie to house-sit with him. They lounge around the pool sipping cool something-or-other alcoholic drinks, day turns into evening, and in their drunken hazes they end up sleeping together - you know, doing the wild thing, bumping uglies or as our high school Personal Development teachers would say, having sexual intercourse. A month or so passes and Abbie finds out that she is pregnant. Abbie decides to keep the baby and offers Robert the choice of either being the baby's father or uncle. After a bit of mulling over and encouragement from Robert's mother, Robert decides to be the baby's father and moves in with Abbie, much to the surprise of all of their friends. For the next six years things go smoothly, and Sam (their son) is brought up in a loving environment, but when Abbie falls in love with Ben (Benjamin Bratt) and starts talking about moving to another city with Ben and Sam, things turn nasty and the inevitable custody battle ensues.

    Whether you love or hate Madonna, this movie proves that she can act. I was effortlessly transported into the story by the actors and managed to forget that I was watching the Queen of Rock 'n' Roll for the entire duration of the movie. The Next Best Thing is far from being the most earth-shattering movie ever made, but I found it enjoyable and entertaining.

Video

    The picture sharpness and detail was great, with plenty of fine detail in the shadows. No low-level noise, edge enhancement or edge bleeding was noticed. There are a couple of deliberately soft-focussed scenes, but none are detrimental to the picture quality.

    The colour for the indoor scenes is perfect, but I felt that almost all of the outdoor scenes were just a tad over-bright, which made the picture look a little flat and washed-out.

    There is some trivial grain present in many of the low-light indoor scenes, but only the fussiest of viewers will even notice its presence, as it never becomes much more than just barely perceptible.

    Only one minor MPEG artefact was noticed right at the end of the film - there was some posterization at 98:40 on the fade-to-black before the credits started to roll. No aliasing was noticed, not even during the courtroom scene (which has the dreaded venetian blinds), although it did come close on a couple of occasions.

    Only a handful of tiny and obscure film artefacts were noticed for the entire film. The most noticeable of these was at 19:38 - 19:45, where there is a black mark that moves with camera movement, probably caused by something on the lens of the camera.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    The dialogue was clear and easy to understand at all times, but its strong and un-moving placement in the centre of the front soundstage was a little disappointing.

    At 6:00, the dialogue appeared to be on the verge of being out of sync, but I do not believe this was a transfer-induced fault. This sync slip is barely perceptible and I had to watch this short scene twice just to be sure I wasn't imagining it.

    The musical score is by Gabriel Yared and it seemed to suit the movie quite nicely.

    Surround channel use - what surround channel use? OK, there are a couple of scenes that actually contain some audible surround activity, but these are few and far between. The surround channels didn't even appear to be used much for musical ambience. Since this is a largely dialogue-driven movie, I must say that I didn't miss the surround channels too much. The highlight of the film's surround use was a short split rear sound effect at 46:56.

    There is no .1 LFE soundtrack on this DVD, but if you have your sound system set up to pass all frequencies below 80Hz to the subwoofer, it will get some light use with the music. This is not the type of movie that requires a sub.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Menu

• Theatrical Trailer
• Cast & Crew Interviews
• Madonna's American Pie Video Clip
• Additional Pan & Scan version
• Higher Dolby Digital 448Kb/s audio stream.

• Nothing

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall