The Threesome

Grade: B+

After an opening sequence that was exactly what I expected, The Threesome grows into something different and better. It begins exploring numerous themes with a more mature eye, miles beyond the raunchy sex comedy I thought it would be, and how it started. Like Twinless before it, and The Baltimorons that I saw right after, The Threesome and the aforementioned are their own distinct peek into relationships. 

Our three main players are Connor, Olivia, and Jenny. Connor used to work with Olivia, and they hooked up some time ago. While visiting Olivia at the restaurant she waitresses at, they notice and strike up a conversation with Jenny, sitting by herself. She has been stood up. The three of them end up having fun with each other that night. Jenny goes her separate way, while a relationship blossoms between Connor and Olivia. She becomes pregnant. A handful of weeks after the activity depicted in the title, Jenny suddenly shows back up with news for Connor. She is a handful of weeks pregnant.

I wonder how the movie would have played, and whether it would have been for the better, if the three leads weren’t impossibly beautiful, and were played by actors with a more plain, everyday, regular person look. Whatever gender you like, there’s at least one of them that you will enjoy looking at. The makeup and lighting certainly don’t hurt. Their faces are lit in a warm, sunny manner, especially near the beginning.

My favorite character, of the two women, was Jenny, played by Ruby Cruz. She was in Bottoms, as were many young women. Easy to get lost in the shuffle there. I didn’t single her out in my review of Bottoms, but I will here. She is an adorable, charming, plucky firecracker of sweetness, with the stuff that Teenage Mark Schroeder crushes were made of. She doesn’t have a gigantic number of credits, but I hope this makes her a star. It’s funny how any ugliness on the inside can make a person a little less attractive to me. Zoey Deutch (Nicholas Hoult’s pregnant wife in Clint Eastwood’s Juror #2) is likely a lovely person in real life – nicer than her Threesome character. Olivia can be a sarcastic smartass with a temper. As Connor, Jonah Hauer-King (from 2025’s I Know What You Did Last Summer and 2023’s The Little Mermaid) does the finest, most memorable acting I’ve seen from him. He doesn’t have a full beard, and we never see him clean-shaven. Always just a couple days’ growth. I don’t know how guys do that, and I’ve been one for 44 years. Connor’s job as a recording engineer is put to comical use in a funny payoff. After a scene that ends with a “burn,” we cut to the studio, as a trombone player blarts out a “wah wah waaaaahhhhh.”

Connor’s best friend is Greg (Jaboukie Young-White). We meet him at the beginning, as part of the exposition (Connor is the best man at Greg’s wedding). Greg shows up frequently, and becomes too involved in the story, seemingly along for the ride as the sassy gay sidekick. Doesn’t he have a job, a life of his own, and – not to mention – a brand new husband?

IMDb is showing that this is screenwriter Ethan Ogilby’s first writing credit ever. No shorts, no TV episodes – nothing before this, and no projects coming up. I kept clocking a recurring strength and a recurring weakness in his screenplay. First, the gripe: in a forced attempt to be clever, there are too many cutesy callbacks to previous lines. There’s even an instance where a character repeats something that they weren’t around to hear the first time it was said. Now, what I loved: this is a funny movie, with many of the lines falling in the territory of dark humor. Some wicked funnybone jolts arise in the midst of some deep, heavy, at times tragic circumstances. Just one line like that? Sure, I can chalk it up to a happy accident. However, it happens, and lands very well, time and time again. Ogilby knows what he’s doing with that.

The situations he puts his characters in are some crazy coincidences, including what happens in the final act. He doesn’t have Olivia and Jenny delivering at the same time in rooms right next door to each other, but it’s almost at that level. Once you jump that hurdle and a few others, this is a film that sneaks up on you with its richness. Two signs of a strong movie are when I feel fully engulfed in the world of it, to the point where nothing distracts me – and when I can’t wait to get the words on the page and try to unpack it for you and myself. The Threesome checks both of those boxes with ink.

Grade: B+