I first saw Threesome during its theatrical run, which coincided with the end of my freshman year at university. I liked the film then, for what it didn't reflect of my experiences it evoked, and its characters suggested people I had met at school, maybe myself at that point, in the exaggerated manner of political cartoons. Which is a scary thought seeing Threesome again some seven years later: maturity (mine?) recasts its protagonists in a contemptible light.

I can no longer shrug it off when "concupiscent" Stuart (Stephen Baldwin) brings a fourth wheel, a blonde babe (Michele Matheson), to the dinner table with USC bedfellows Eddy (Josh Charles) and Alex (Lara Flynn Boyle) and proceeds to eviscerate her for telling the anticlimactic story of "a pretty meadow." The snatch of voiceover that follows attempts to atone for the title trio's superiority complex, but I shudder because Hollywood went on to make a whole 'nother movie about that girl, the cruel The Truth About Cats and Dogs. (There, many viewers were/are too busy rooting for Janeane Garofalo's ugly duckling to notice the constant humiliation of Uma Thurman's Noelle.)

I shudder because openly gay writer-director Andrew Fleming, adapting his own college days for the screen, attempts to make us envious of such glibness by stressing the rare harmony, otherwise and sexual, between Stuart, closeted Eddy, and Alex, the interloper who loves each of them for different reasons. If memory serves, I left the cinema in search of that kind of closeness; I may have even tried to impose it on my co-ed suitemates in later years. While Threesome behaves progressively about a lot of things (it is sexy and it isn't gutless), one side effect is that it sanctions elitism, never really finding fault with the central coterie's insularity. Threesome is thus barely more sophisticated than the T&A romps of the early-'80s, defined as they were by their seductive eternal adolescence.

At times in fact, Alex seems inspired by Porky's Ms. Honeywell, whose locker-room fetish made her an easy target of jocks. Alex lapses into an orgasmic seizure when she hears big words. ("I find libraries very erotic," she says.) In one scene that actually gets dissected in subsequent dialogue, thereby robbing it of comic absurdity, she visits Eddy's study carrel and is brought to climax by his recitation of Hawthorne. Neither does Fleming successfully blend the silly and the serious without undercutting both--unlike, say, John Hughes, master of tonal modulations. (The Breakfast Club's confessional sequence is miraculously untarnished by the corny drug-induced shenanigans that precede it.) Fleming's idea of a unifier is show-and-tell narration, generally and here a sign of faithless direction. My guess is that he lost his grip on the film to nostalgia; and I'm not about to do the same.

Columbia Tri-Star's Threesome DVD is very good. The 'flipper' contains 1.85:1, 16x9-enhanced widescreen and fullscreen presentations on opposite sides. Identical save their aspect ratios (the letterboxing is actually matting), these versions boast flattering colours and above-average detail, with nary a hint of compression artifacts. The audio is Dolby 2.0 surround, and it's suitable; the songtrack sounds better than FM radio. Extras include commentary from the low-pitched Fleming in which he reveals that the studio didn't contest the sex at all, but did have issues with the aforementioned bimbo encounter! (I wouldn't go so far as to cut the bit, for at least it hits a nerve.) As long as he was going in an unsympathetic direction, Fleming should've kept the superior, you-can't-go-home-again alternative ending, also shown here with optional play-by-play from Fleming. The disc additionally features talent files and thematically-tied trailers for About Last Night... and Can't Hardly Wait, although none for Threesome itself.-Bill Chambers

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DVD VITALS:
Running Time
94 minutes
MPAA
R
Aspect Ratio(s)
1.85:1 ONLY, 16x9-enhanced
Languages
English Dolby Surround,
French Mono,
Spanish Mono,
Portuguese Mono
CC
Yes
Subtitles
English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Korean, Thai
DVD-9
Region One
Columbia Tri-Star

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Published: May, 2001