Three to Tango

An arrogant millionaire asks a prospective employee of his, whom he believes to be gay, to keep an eye on his mistress. The “gay man” ultimately falls for the millionaire’s mistress, but cannot tell anyone that he’s not gay, because he might lose an extremely lucrative contract from the rich bastard. The mistress also likes the “gay man” but cannot follow-through on her emotions, since she too, believes the man to be a homosexual. Wackiness ensues.

Safe, flighty comedy with an original premise, generates a few giggles here and there, a couple of laugh-out loud scenes, but is ultimately rendered mediocre with its generic acting, predictable script and one-dimensional “bad guy”. If anyone in the cast stands out it is Oliver Platt playing another great role in a so- so film. Matthew Perry does little to improve upon his typical character type-cast, your basic smarmy, sarcastic, “nice guy”, who incidentally recreates the same lame “joke” as from FOOLS RUSH IN (5/10), when his character unknowingly pops the top of a champagne bottle (Hardy-hardy-hard…whatta laugh-out riot!). Campbell is cute and plays her role well, but pulls too many of her “look at how cute I am when I smile” smiles for my taste. The biggest problem I had with the characters was the horribly written role for Dylan McDermott, who is there for no reason but to be the “rich A-Hole”. Any guess on who she’s gonna end up with here?

It’s unfortunate because I did find quite a few funny scenes in this film, especially once word got out around town that the Matthew Perry character was gay (His father’s reaction and his life-long buddies were the best!). I am still recommending this film, because despite it starting out a little slow, I did think there were enough funny moments to make up for the predictable script and underwritten characters. Just don’t go in there expecting to see something that will have you discussing it for days on end. In fact, only hours after my own viewing, I had all but forgotten about the entire experience. I guess some might designate this film as a “video” movie, and I certainly would not attempt to sway them otherwise, especially since Neve gives us no T or A for the big screen, and the whole experience is much like an extended sitcom. All in all, the film delivers many hit-and-miss jokes, a nice soundtrack, Neve Campbell looking cute and Matthew Perry looking chubby, a predictable script and very little tangible romance. And yes, even after having seen the film, I still think that the title sucks.

(c) 2021 Berge Garabedian