Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Threesome’ on Netflix, a Deceptively Smart Rom-Com Bolstered by a Witheringly Funny Zoey Deutch

The Threesome (now streaming on Netflix, in addition to VOD platforms like Amazon Prime Video) is about one guy, two ladies, and, eventually, two babies. Whoops! It’s a plausible premise, sure, but probable? Nah. But if you let it set the hook, it’ll be a highly enjoyable modern – which is to say, slightly askew – romantic comedy for you. It’s elevated by terrific performances from Ruby Cruz, Jonah Hauer-King and a typically witty Zoey Deutch, all of whom inject real emotions into a silly scenario and come up with something at least memorable, and sometimes even a bit magical.

The Gist: Olivia (Deutch) and Connor (Hauer-King) slept together once. They then run into each other at a mutual friend’s wedding, where she shoots him down. You get the feeling that she’s used to shooting men down. She’s very good at shooting men down. The witheringly clever manner in which she shoots men down only makes her more attractive, and I think she’s well aware of that. Savor that irony. Anyway, Connor doesn’t give up so easily. He drops by the restaurant where she works under the pretense of saying hello to his good pal Greg (Jaboukie Young-White), her coworker and the aforementioned mutual. She begins the shootdown process. Greg points over at a table where a young woman sits alone – she got stood up. A prime tool to make Olivia jealous, perhaps? Connor chats up Jenny (Cruz), and he’s a nice guy and she’s sweet and Olivia steps in and the play may be working. 

It works so well, in fact, that Olivia, Connor and Jenny go dancing together. Drinks are drunken and they all end up back at Connor’s place, where one kisses one and one kisses another and another kisses the third and around it goes. Cut to the next morning – you horndogs may boo at the excision of a potentially smoldering triple-nookie sequence – and Olivia is gone and Connor and Jenny share the shower then she leaves and Connor finds Olivia at the bagel joint, where they begin a terribly cute, warm, funny, relationship that stretches on for a few weeks until he finds the pregnancy test. It’s not a terrible thing, what’s happening. Olivia’s serial wiseassery drops away for a moment and they confess their mutual love and start making plans. She’ll keep the baby and they’ll figure things out as it goes. Olivia meets Connor’s mother (Julia Sweeney) and when they get back to his place, Jenny’s on the porch with a we have to talk look on her face. Uh oh.

So, right, yeah, Connor now has two baby-mamas. His and Olivia’s plans go kaplooey in the tidal wave of complicated emotions. What can you do but muddle through? The sitcom catch is, Jenny comes from a more conservative family and she still lives with her parents and she told them that Connor was her boyfriend, so there’s a ruse to uphold. Connor tries to do right by everyone here – he buys and builds cribs, attends birthing classes, recommends Olivia’s OB-GYN to Jenny and wouldn’t you know it, Jenny walks into the office for her appointment just as Olivia finishes hers, so Connor stays and the nurse says “Did you forget something” and Jenny quips, “Yeah, birth control.” This plot, man. Curveball after curveball. How are these well-adjusted, but still mistake-prone people going to manage this situation, which makes quantum physics look like kindergarten math? The best that they can, but that could mean “perfectly fine” or “poorly.” 

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Wasn’t one of the Baldwins in a threesome movie in the ’90s? Right: It was Threesome. So cross that with a thoughtful pregnancy comedy that’s 60 percent indie-brained and 40 percent mainstream, like the wonderful, overlooked Together Together. 

Performance Worth Watching: Deutch’s razor wit and sexy charm emerged in Everybody Wants Some!!, and she’s only honed it to a finer comedic point in the years since. 

Memorable Dialogue: Before they realize they’re pregnant, blissful couple Connor and Olivia babysit her sister’s pair of toddlers. When the little monsters finally cease their campaign of mayhem and destruction and go to bed, Connor breathes a sigh of relief and quips, “I felt like I was in Uncut Gems.”

Sex and Skin: Nothing beyond the from-the-neck-up triple-kissing scene, and a few bits of crass dialogue.

Our Take: The Threesome marks a progression from wacky rom-coms of yore – which seem to be nearly extinct, for better or worse – that would have taken some of these situations and amplified them unto idiocy. The key difference is, this movie isn’t about the little white lies, blindside complications and goofy coincidences, but rather the characters forced to navigate them. Director Chad Hartigan (Little Fish), screenwriter Ethan Ogilby and the cast put the effort into making the characters relatable people with complex emotions instead of movie constructs ticker-taping one-liners and stammering through awkward moments, of which there are many. So so many.

Elevated as the dialogue can be on occasion, the comedy here never feels forced. It flows naturally from Deutch, who renders Olivia a whip-smart but semi-chaotic woman who has dalliances with a married douchenozz (Josh Segarra) and seems to be content living by the seat of her pants prior to getting knocked up; she’s one of those people whose pervasive wit makes it almost impossible to discern when they’re being earnest. In contrast, Cruz is wide-eyed and sincere, playing a relatively sheltered type who uses rumors of her religious background as a means to mess with Connor by asking him to pray with her, and when his sincere attempt to meet her on her terms grows awkward, she reveals that she’s joking. Olivia has a 90/10 irreverence-to-sincerity ratio, where Jenny is 10/90. It’s a compelling dynamic that produces many laughs in non-obvious ways.

If The Threesome shows any seams in its construction, it’s the struggle to balance narrative agency among the three principals. Connor, trapped between two charismatic women, comes off a bit bland and willowy as he nobly tries to do right by everyone and himself, which may be an impossible task. We’re not sure if he’s truly up to it, because Hauer-King doesn’t create much of an interior life for him. He’s at least likeable enough to be functional in a movie that smartly works in the gray areas of social-emotional interactions – these are people who don’t always make the right decisions, but neither are they stupid or careless. Their mistakes aren’t fatal, just difficult slopes in the rock-climb of life. The movie asserts that matters pertaining to love are never neat and tidy no matter how hard we try. Love is crazy, stupid, messy, sloppy, idiotic, ridiculous and ignoramus-like, and all we can do is deal with it, because it’s also vital to the funniest and most poignant moments in our lives.

Our Call: The Threesome surprised me. It’s a delightful, consistently funny and insightful comedy. STREAM IT.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.