Three To Tango
A very progressive take on the whole homosexual closeted gay situation, wrapped in a very mainstream romantic comedy. Ironically, the woman are not very well treated here, for runtime reasons I think.
The hero is some schlubby straight architect with a gay colleague, but he’s the one stereotypically homosexual: he cooks very well, screams in a high-pitched voice, and is very emotional.
They finally got their big break, designing a big remodelling for a Chicago museum, this has got to work out or they will be homeless. Their rivals are a pair of snobs with big bucks, and they mock them relentlessly. The last scene reveals they are not only gay, but an actual couple, sleeping on the same bed. They represent the homophobic closeted gays, but not as bad guys.
The boss is a married yuppie, with power to disburse millions, but he’s some action on the side, a local artist. Even though (or maybe because) his wife is a dominatrix, he is extremely jealous over his girlfriday. Due to some contrived coincidences, the boss and the secretary assume our protagonist is gay, so the boss demands he goes spy on his mistress.
Since there millions on the line, our protagonist cannot say no, and worse, the boss is like a less pathetic Mossberg from Office Space. Our dude just have to take it on the chin and pretend to be gay for a couple weeks, to completely lock in their money.
Our boy goes spy on her, several times, the boss even asks him to spend a lot of time with her, and it’s fine because he’s gay. She also thinks so and he doesn’t correct her, which leads to some very intimate and liberal confessions that wouldn’t happen otherwise.
Of course they fall for each other, but she feels bad since all her relationships are dead ends: a married man, and now a gay guy. His roommates are not a big help, since they feel squeamish, even though they know each other for a while. The only other help is the gay colleague, but since he goes to his place outraged of being seen as gay, when he’s just a “normal guy”, he gets catty, but tells him to stay off the closet, but not before the contract is finished.
It all comes to a head on the big contract signing ceremony. The boss’s girlfriday accidentally meets the wife and they get along very well, until she needs to be buried ASAP. Our protagonist saves the day by pretending to be her boyfriend, and they go away and have a fight. After that she cools down somewhere.
On the day of the big award, given by a LGBT organisation, she shows up and our protagonist spills the beans, confessing he’s straight and in love with her. She storms out, and gets chased by the protagonist and the boss. Both get knocked out by her punches.
Some time later, they meet on a special location involving puke-worthy tuna sandwiches, she correctly scolds him for such dishonest behaviour, but then incorrectly forgives him, it’s for work you see.
Our protagonist is a Friends-level Matthew Perry, and the girl is a manic pixie version of Neve Campbell, at least it’s not Wild Things, but it’s not a strong character like Scream. The boss is some dude I saw in some places, and the gay colleague is a fabulous Oliver Platt.
This is my place for ramblings about sequences of images that exploit the human visual limitation know as persistence of vision.