TMS Movie Review: The Threesome
(Kai Caddy / Vertical Entertainment)
Chad Hartigan’s The Threesome is a peculiar addition to both the romantic comedy genre and modern film in general. It’s not subversive enough to be something like Paul Mazursky’s counterculture classic Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969), and more akin to Blake Edwards’ ménage-à-trois romcom Micki & Maude (1984); but with attempts to update the themes for the current age. The end result kind of proves that it’s almost impossible to do that.
In contemporary Little Rock, AR, Connor Blake (Jonah Hauer-King) is still pining for his former co-worker and casual hook-up, Olivia Capitano (Zoey Deutch), who is trying to ease into bachelorette-hood. While attempting to escape a married man, Kevin (Josh Segarra), she just got out of an affair with, Olivia makes herself the third wheel on a date Connor was set up with grad student Jenny Brooks (Ruby Cruz). The three end the night at Connor’s place, which turns out to be the beginning of Olivia realizing she does have feelings for Connor, and they begin a relationship. Only things get really awkward when Jenny resurfaces to reveal she’s pregnant—at the same time Olivia discovers she’s pregnant too. Jaboukie Young-White co-stars as Connor’s best friend, Kristin Slaysman plays Olivia’s older sister and Julia Sweeney appears as Connor’s mom. The Threesome was written by Ethan Ogilby and features a cool, trippy score by Keegan DeWitt.
(Vertical Entertainment)
Hartigan’s new movie is a mish-mash of a lot of things. I quite enjoyed the performances by the three leads, all of whom successfully hold the story together. Deutch effortlessly pulls off the hip/cool girl ideal and Hauer-King does a good spin on the traditional romantic lead. But it’s Cruz who is the most impressive—playing the complete opposite of her role in Emma Seligman’s Bottoms (2023)—as the wholesome good girl of the trio. Hartigan’s directing choices give The Threesome an artsy edge, and the whole first half leaves a lot of potential with a great build-up. But the way the story unfolds is just really dumb and perplexing. With modern comedies dealing with accidental pregnancies, there’s a lot of jumping through hoops to not acknowledge politics or religion when the woman suddenly changes her mind and decides to keep the baby; similar to how Judd Apatow’s Knocked Up (2007) portrays the choice. Here it’s baffling because all three leads are written as forward-thinking, while Jenny is also the daughter of a Methodist family, and the film still tries to be as neutral as possible. Besides the preposterous plot progression, a few strange developments make sense once you notice most of the creatives behind the camera of The Threesome are men. After the inciting incident happens, we never see Olivia, or especially Jenny, ponder the fact that they had a bi-curious experience, save for a single joke near the end. The movie just acts like it’s completely normal for straight women to occasionally have woman/man/woman threesomes.
Worst of all, for a feature called The Threesome, the big, important sex scene isn’t very sexy or graphic. The whole thing ends up feeling like a PG-13 movie with some F-bombs. Though it sounds like I’m knocking the film with a bad review, I did still enjoy the visuals, the music, the performances, and hope to see the stars pop up on screen in the future. Maybe this is one of those times where you just need to see the picture yourself to come up with a conclusion. Mine is that I felt like I was watching an R-rated romcom from 20-30 years ago.