It starts off as a light romcom. Abby (Madonna) is a yoga instructor whose biological clock is ticking. After a bad break-up, she has a drunken one night stand with her gay best friend Robert (Rupert Everett). Now she’s pregnant and the two decide that they will muddle through parenting together.
Leaving aside the cliché of a desperate middle-aged woman turning to her gay best friend as some sort of last resort sperm bank, it could have been an amusing premise. There’s a funny scene where their son Sam (Malcolm Stumpf) asks Abby why Mummy and Daddy sleep in different beds. And the complication of Abby falling in love with nice lawyer Ben Cooper (Benjamin Cooper)- that should work, right?
Yet this is where the film takes a nasty turn. What starts as a comedy becomes a mean spirited drama with a depressing custody battle that makes Abby seem disgustingly selfish and Robert awfully wet. His character started off as urbane and funny but it’s no fun to watch him be humiliated by the court and patronised by Abby- the implication being that now Ben is in her life, Robert should just put up with whatever little she gives him. It’s like a very bad episode of Jeremy Kyle; not dramatic but sad to watch some people stoop so low and others allow themselves to be metaphorically beaten up. Rupert Everett must have been a glutton for punishment to sign up for this torture.
There is one scene worth watching: an unintentionally funny scene where Abby is at a gay friend’s funeral (though the family are in denial about his sexuality). His dying wish was for somebody to sing ‘American Pie’ at his funeral but the family are having none of that. So in protest Madonna starts singing and soon everyone joins in in her latest awful cover. He could have requested ‘Into The Groove’ or perhaps a medley of Madonna hits. I don’t know whether Madonna was trying to portray herself as a gay icon but it is so bad it’s good.