Threesome Review
Of the two early '90s ménage à trois flicks each starring a Baldwin brother and a Twin Peaks babe, Threesome is the messier and more unpredictable effort. This college-age comedy features enjoyably reptilian Stephen Baldwin and likably brittle Lara Flynn Boyle alongside boy-next-door Josh Charles as a trio of co-ed dorm suitemates. Although the dialogue is sometimes wooden, Charles' narrative voiceover is rather ponderous, and writer/director Andrew Fleming relies on too many montages to tell his meandering story, Threesome nonetheless captures both the everything-matters intensity and the sexual confusion of its characters. Part coming-of-age story, part unorthodox romance, it's also one of the few films to successfully portray the tangled emotions and hormonal urges that sometimes lead kids, both gay and straight, to step away from the sexual roles they've been assigned. The scenario, straight girl loves closeted gay guy loves straight guy loves straight girl, sounds like a setup for titillating tedium, but the script acknowledges this danger via a pair of voyeuristic supporting parts played with dead-on comedic timing by Alexis Arquette and Martha Gehman. Yet in the end, even as Baldwin's character spouts such lines like "For me, sex is like pizza; even if it's bad, it's pretty good," the protagonists' three-way love affair is sweeter and less exploitative than the scheming romances in your typical Meg Ryan or Julia Roberts vehicle. If the film ultimately shies away from actually depicting the gay element of the equation (and feels the need to play Arquette's openly queer character for a few cheap laughs), Threesome is still pretty adventurous for a major studio flick and, quibbles aside, it respects all three of its protagonists' lifestyles. Brian J. Dillard, Rovi
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