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Three, streaming on the beloved free service Tubi, is a relationship drama with a supposedly steamy edge, as a heterosexual couple complicates their bedroom dynamic by trying out a threesome with the woman’s lesbian best friend. Like most movies about an opened-up relationship, it becomes a navel-gazing cautionary tale.
THREE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
The Gist: Jayson (Christopher Deon) is a newly successful video game designer about to turn 30, and he has a very specific gift in mind: He wants to have a threesome alongside his fiancée Tiffany (Tresure P.), and thinks he sees a perfect candidate for a third in Tiff’s best friend Ashley (Vanessa D. Fant), given that she has just arrived in town after years living in Paris and promptly confessed to Tiffany that she’s gay. Ashley isn’t interested in any contact with Jayson, but he’s apparently so gung-ho about the arrangement that he doesn’t mind, figuring he’ll enjoy a sort of real-life porn scenario between the two women. But a crazy one-off night turns into something more as seemingly endless complications (and unexpected feelings) emerge from the sexual experiment.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: It’s probably a little unfair to compare a clumsily written, stage-based, superficially salacious melodrama about Black characters to Tyler Perry, but it’s hard to avoid the parallels, particularly to his Netflix-era non-comedies like A Fall From Grace. The wild tonal swings aren’t as frequent, but a particularly sudden lurch in the final 10 minutes feels like vintage Perry – except in place of tut-tut moralism, there’s a kind of gleeful amorality assuring the audience that it’s all just a game for some reason.
Performance Worth Watching: It’s all relative, but of the central trio, Vanessa D. Fant escapes with the most dignity simply by looking skeptical of the whole enterprise, even as the movie throws her character way under the bus.
Memorable Dialogue: Any memorable lines in the movie stick in your head for the wrong reason, usually because of how they attempt to create a patchwork of believable relationships and backstories that don’t actually exist on screen. For example, Tiffany and Ashley are described as “thick as thieves” despite not having seen each other in years and Tiffany feeling gobsmacked and betrayed upon learning about her supposed best friend’s homosexuality.
Sex and Skin: Most of the characters spend a fair amount of the movie half-dressed, but when it’s time for actual sex scenes, especially the pivotal threesome, the movie demurely cuts away; it’s as frightened of actually witnessing sex acts as Jayson, who pesters Tiffany about the threesome for weeks only to bail in discomfort after about 45 seconds.
Our Take: Maybe Nina Stakz, the writer-director behind Three, should have started smaller. “A couple thinking about a threesome invites their lesbian friend to join them” isn’t really a movie premise; it’s more like an episode of a TV series. The fact that this movie reaches a runtime of 105 minutes feels like a hellish miracle of endless, terrible dialogue scenes; faced with the prospect of a threesome, the couple talks about it, then does it, then talks about it some more, and then their friends talk about it, and the couple talks about their friends talking about it, and then, eventually, everyone has arguments about it. The sheer amount of chatter in this movie should be ample motivation to make sure everyone is at least mic’d correctly, but Three can’t even manage that: Some lines are muffled, others shift in volume mid-sentence, and a few scenes compete with the sound of cars passing outside the interior sets. Staktz’s writing and direction of her actors similarly qualifies as neglect. When Jayson hears that Ashley gave Tiffany at least seven orgasms, he nonsensically attempts to count to seven on his fingers. Is he trying to count up orgasms he wasn’t there to witness? Does he not remember offhand how many seven is? Why does everyone in this movie act like they’re constantly receiving nonsensical directions from just offscreen?
In short, this is not a professionally made movie, to the point where knocking it feels a little cruel, especially because it’s showing on the country’s most popular free streaming service. Three isn’t taking anyone’s money. But it can steal viewers’ time, and the movie does feel manipulative, not only of the streaming algorithm, but a bunch of long-standing prejudices: That lesbians harbor powerful and unrequited feelings for their closest female friends; that bisexuality is a selfish pose; that it’s most prudent to treat third parties in a threesome as anonymous bodies, easily disposed. It all comes across as especially contrived and stereotypical because Tresure P. and Vanessa D. Fant have so little chemistry as friends or lovers; they feel like they’re reading their relationship off of cue cards. The movie then tries to play all of this as part of a twisty melodrama, which would be a lot more effective if anything of interest happened before the ridiculous final 10 minutes.
Our Call: Look, we all love Tubi. They have a wealth of great movies available to watch for free. This isn’t one of them; it’s not great and, for that matter, it’s barely a movie. SKIP IT.
Jesse Hassenger (@rockmarooned) is a writer living in Brooklyn. He’s a regular contributor to The A.V. Club, Polygon, and The Week, among others. He podcasts at www.sportsalcohol.com, too.
Watch Three on Tubi
