Gay Best Friend: Peter Steinberg (Oliver Platt) in "Three To Tango" (1999)
Thursday, October 14, 2021 at 3:00PM 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...