Friday, March 20, 2009

Threesome


Eddy (Josh Charles) is a film student who's unsure of his sexual orientation. Alex (Lara Flynn Boyle) and Stuart (Stephen Baldwin) are his college dorm roommates. Alex likes Eddy, and Stuart likes Alex. Eddy likes both of them. Gosh, do you suppose...?

Threesome is the latest entry in the new Generation X genre of boy-meets-boy-meets-girl movie. It has a few minor jokes and some terribly overwritten dialogue. It also forces viewers to go a long way for its climactic menage a trois (that's French for complex body movements). But despite the characters' almost continual chatter about bisexuality, the movie sidesteps the issue until the very end – and then drops it into the story like a lead balloon.

The movie might have slipped by as a low-key comedy, if the cast was more engaging. But Flynn is shrill, Charles is annoying and Baldwin is mostly crude and dumb. All three of them are perpetually horny, and only Charles is ever seen near a classroom. They're the world's oldest undergraduates, and they carry on like a pack of high schoolers who just discovered sex. It's not a pretty sight.

Threesome is occasionally funsome, but mostly it's tiresome.

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