We are presented with two architects who are vying for a contract that can revitalize their ailing business with a roguish developer named Charles Newman (Dylan McDermot). Charles is married and having an affair with Amy (Neve Campbell), but he is jealous and wants to keep tabs on her. Thinking Oscar (Matthew Perry) is gay and no threat, he asks him to spy on her, implying that it might help him to get the contract. The rest is pretty predictable. They fall in love, but she thinks he's gay so there is no hope. Eventually love prevails (no spoiler here, no-one on the planet could watch this movie and think they wouldn't get together), but not before numerous mistaken gender orientation gags run their course.

This film was obviously presented from a gay perspective as a satire on homophobia. All the gay characters are portrayed as respectable, admirable and wise, while all the straight men are portrayed as rogues, misfits and buffoons. You see skit after skit where homophobia is lampooned. Women can't confide in a man unless they think he's gay, because straight men are just too insensitive to understand. Gays in the closet are bashed repeated with snide remarks. This probably explains why this film was more well received by women than men, since much the comedy really mocked straight men and their fear of homosexuality.

Matthew Perry has made a career out of playing hapless losers with the appeal being that it's funny to see someone who is even more woefully inept than the average viewer. While I don't find this particularly funny, I will give him his due and say that he is a master of the art. He gets high marks for being able to simultaneously evoke laughter and sympathy over his plight. Also, I found his chemistry good with Campbell, and his longing for her was played with a good deal of sincerity and sensitivity.

Neve Campbell is really just window dressing here. Her role is to smile, look cute and sexy and play the love interest. This is not a real stretch for her since she can essentially do all those things by just standing there.

Dylan McDermot was pretty dreadful as the scoundrel. In his defense, he didn't have much to work with since the way his part was written he was portraying more of a caricature than a character. It is difficult for an actor to slip into the skin of an absurdity and know exactly how to play it.

The best acting in the film came from Oliver Platt, who played Oscar Novak's business partner. He was funny and played an excellent straight man to Perry's clown. Platt is a veteran and a professional and always brings substance to his supporting roles.

Th


Social satire about homosexuality

Synopsis:
Oscar Novak (Matthew Perry) is an up and coming architect, bidding with his partner (Oliver Platt) for a project to renovate a classic Chicago landmark. Business Tycoon Charles Newmann (Dylan McDermott), the man seeking the bids, mistakenly comes to believe that Oscar is gay and asks him to babysit his mistress (Neve Campbell) for him. With his business on the line, he agrees to do it, but even in agreeing, he must now pretend to prefer a sexual preference that he does not. Things go from bad to worse when he falls for the tycoon's Mistress.

About the Movie:
This is not a film for social conservatives. With homosexuality having become one of the major hot topics in America, this film proves how a movie can have as much a social agenda as a church can..

One interesting thing to point out about this film is how it uses Mathew Perry's character Oscar Novak to mirror the plight of closeted homosexuals. The Amazon Editorial Review (by Mark Engleheart) completely missed the point of the movie in saying that Novak's supposed gayness is treated simply as "an oppressive burden."

Social standing, job security and even friendships hang in the balance because of Novak's supposed sexual orientation. The film's point is that this is a burden that many homosexuals feel they have to deal with. In a sense Novak is now forced to deal with the same issues that gays deal with by having to "be in the closet" about being straight. If anything, the movie advocates openness and tolerance, something Novak learns about first hand. It's the classic, "walking in another man's shoes" satire.

Ultimately, Three to Tango is a film that pretends to be a romantic comedy but is really a obvious endeavor to promote an image of homosexuality as "normal" through genuinely humorous satire. In an era of political correctness, this is the ultimate film for it. It presents a perfect politically correct image of homosexuality, even going so far as to make it seem like the ideal to strive for. Homosexuals are the good guys, sensitive, understanding, and open, while straight men are losers, who cheat on their wives and are emotionally detached and insensitive.

Three to Tango does it job very well, playing on the audience's emotional output, and challenging their conventions with uneasy situations (as many movies do) to get the audience to agree with the premise.

Matthew Perry's character gets into his situation and gains his love interest precisely because he fits the stereotypical homosexual image (the one of the sensitive well-dressed male without the lisp and limp wrist). The movie seems to say that the homosexual image is the one to strive for, because Perry, a straight man fits it so perfectly and finds happiness with a beautiful woman in the end as a result.

Meanwhile, the quasi bad guy, Dylan McDermott's character, Charles Newmann, is a caricature of a straight man, insensitive, an adulterer, a manly man, who's possessive,