October 22, 1999
Web posted at: 12:35 p.m. EST (1635 GMT)

By Reviewer Paul Clinton

(CNN) -- The basic conceit of "Three To Tango" is nothing new. A straight man poses as gay to achieve a goal while lusting after a woman. Check out the 1977 ABC situation comedy "Three's Company." In fact, this feature film actually feels like a soggy '70s sitcom-gone-bad.

The film stars Matthew Perry as Oscar. Neve Campbell appears as Amy, the object of his affection. Oliver Platt plays Peter, Oscar's partner in an architectural firm. And Dylan McDermott is a Chicago tycoon named Charles, married but having an affair with Amy.

As the film opens, Charles has offered Oscar and Peter a career-making opportunity to design a multimillion-dollar cultural center in the heart of Chicago. Through a series of awkward and obvious plot ploys, Charles comes to think that the boyish and funny Oscar is a gay man. Being overly protective of his investments -- and Amy is a major investment for him -- he uses the promise of that big contract to blackmail Oscar into spying on the independent young woman.

After all, he can trust a gay man with his most prized possession, can't he? Of course, the joke's on him, yuk, yuk. The aggressively heterosexual Oscar promptly falls helplessly in love with Amy. And the rest of the film is a never-ending series of cute moments based on Oscar's sexual orientation vs. his gay cover.

Screenwriters Rodney Vaccaro and Aline Brosh McKenna seem to want it both ways.

On one hand, they want to be politically correct about homosexuality and at every opportunity practically say -- à la "Seinfeld" -- "not that there's anything wrong with that." On the other hand, Oscar's supposedly gay sexuality is reduced to stereotypes whenever possible, accompanied by snide remarks and big wink-winks between the straight characters in the film.

These high jinks may have worked between John Ritter and Norman Fell back in the "Three's Company" days, but now they come off as insulting and condescending. One look at NBC's "Will & Grace" -- or the film "Happy, Texas" which also deals with feigned gay identities -- shows there are plenty of ways to mine humor from the interactions between gays and straights.

But the biggest crime this movie commits is its banality in a desperate attempt to appeal to the lowest common denominator.

Perry's attempts at moving from NBC's "Friends" to film are a seamless study in failure.

Have you ever seen "A Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon" (1988) or "Parallel Lives" (1994, made for television)? Didn't think so. The fact that his characters in these films are practically the same man who enters America's living rooms each week on his show doesn't help.

Not that he doesn't have company. Most of his TV cohorts have had trouble making the jump, too, with the exceptions of Lisa Kudrow, ("The Opposite of Sex," 1998,and this year's "Analyze This") and maybe Courteney Cox ("Scream" and "Scream" and another "Scream" -- 1996, 1997 and the new yelp to come in 2000).

The mysterious quality that allows an actor's work to "translate" from television to film seems to have eluded McDermott, too, despite his success on ABC's "The Practice."

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By contrast, Campbell, from FOX's "Party of Five," has joined Cox in having some success in Wes Craven's series of screams and in John McNaughton's "Wild Things" (1998).

But to be fair, no one could rise above this one-note, trite script.

Overall, "Three To Tango" is a disappointment for everyone involved -- including the audience -- and a poor choice for TV and stage director Damon Santostefano to use as his debut in feature filmmaking.

"Three To Tango" is rated PG-13, with some sex-related situations and language. It has a running time of 98 minutes.

"Three To Tango" is a production of CNN Interactive sister company Warner Bros. Movies, a Time Warner property.