Three to Tango

Directed by Damon Santostefano, Three to Tango follows Matthew Perry’s Oscar Novak as he’s roped into watching over his potential employer’s (Dylan McDermott’s Charles Newman) mistress (Neve Campbell’s Amy Post) – with complications ensuing after Oscar naturally begins falling for Amy (despite the fact that she thinks he’s gay). It’s a sitcom-friendly premise that’s employed to sitcom-like effect by Santostefano, as the filmmaker, armed with Rodney Patrick Vaccaro and Aline Brosh McKenna’s screenplay, delivers a fairly generic yet mostly watchable comedy that’s elevated by the charming efforts of its stars – with, in particular, Perry’s winning, laugh-out-loud funny turn elevating the proceedings on a regular basis. It is, as such, relatively easy to overlook the movie’s proliferation of questionable elements, including an ongoing reliance on cringe-worthy gay-panic jokes and a dated swing-forward soundtrack, although the film is, by the time all’s said and done, just about as forgettable an endeavor as one could possibly envision – with the end result a passable time-waster that’d hardly be worth mentioning were it not for the engaging work of its three central performers.

**1/2 out of ****