Gay Best Friend: Peter Steinberg (Oliver Platt) in "Three To Tango" (1999)

A series by Christopher James looking at the 'Gay Best Friend' trope

Oliver Platt's boredom-induced hairstyle is far from the worst part of "Three to Tango."

Why did every member of Friends want to do a gay themed movie as their attempted jump to film stardom? Lisa Kudrow earned awards attention in the sublimely tart The Opposite of Sex, while Jennifer Aniston’s charm and chemistry with Paul Rudd nearly made The Object of My Affection work (okay, maybe not). Matthew Perry’s dreadful vehicle Three To Tango feels like the nadir of the Friends theatrical launching pads, gay-themed or otherwise. With a script forged in gay panic, the instantly dated comedy is short on charm and laughs. However, it has casts a bizarre spell as a hate-watch. It’s an insensitive film that is a strange reflection of 1998 attitudes towards the LGBTQ community and what types of vehicles could launch a film career.

For the purposes of this column, our entryway into this movie is through Oliver Platt’s Peter Steinberg. He’s the openly gay architect partner of Oscar Novak (Perry). Through a series of bizarre miscommunications that would’ve been vetoed by the Friends writer’s room, everyone starts to think Oscar is the gay partner and Peter is the straight one...

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Tribeca: An Order of Schmaltz

It's our last day of Tribeca reviews. Here's Abstew on "Chef"

It is definitely a good time to be a foodie. We live in a golden age where an ingenious pastry chef can fuse together a croissant and a doughnut to create the wonder that is the Cronut. (And then make people wait hours in line for the possibility of a taste.) It's a time where celebrity chefs from shows on The Food Network and Cooking Channel are greeted with the same sort of adoration and enthusiasm once reserved for rock stars. Where food-based reality shows like Top Chef and Hell's Kitchen aren't just niche programming but hugely successful phenomenons. So it's surprising that film hasn't entirely caught up with the trend. But writer/director/and actor Jon Favreau aims to correct that with his culinary-set film, Chef. [more...]

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Goddess Behaving Badly

She's ba-aaaack!!! Look, it's Sharon Stone on the set of Gods Behaving Badly (via Zimbio). 

Goddess on the mountain top 
Burning like a silver flame 
The summit of beauty and love 
And Venus was her name 

-Bananarama "Venus"

She also goes by Aphrodite.

Gods Behaving Badly is producer turned director Marc Turteltaub's first feature so we have no idea whether to salivate or run for cover but the high-concept plot "Greek Gods living in NYC intervene in the lives of a young couple" sounds like the kind of thing that could go either way. It might be immense popcorn fun with lively star turns or the more common typical modern comedy which tends to rely on concept and stars (they've got both here) and forgets that you actually need ideas beyond them if you want more than a three or four laughs over two hours.

Beyond Sharon -- hugely watchable whether great or terrible -- John Turturro and Rosie Perez as Hades and his trapped wife Persephone sound like potential comedy gold, right? Other cast members include: Phyllica Rashad as Demeter, Edie Falco as Artemis, Christopher Walken as Zeus (top billed), and Nelson Ellis as Dionysus. The weirdest casting has to be Oliver Platt as Apollo.... uh, okay. I hope there's a more clever joke there than merely the casting of a rolypoly comic actor as the blindingly beautiful sun god.