Rating: R | Runtime: 111 minutes
Release Date: September 5th, 2025 (USA)
Studio: Vertical Entertainment
Director(s): Chad Hartigan
Writer(s): Ethan Ogilby

Do you always bring another person?

We can all agree this is Greg’s (Jaboukie Young-White) fault, right? He just had to play matchmaker in what he correctly assumed was a no-lose situation upon seeing a just stood-up Jenny (Ruby Cruz) sitting alone by his bar. If Connor (Jonah Hauer-King) went over as his charming self, they might hit it off. And, even if they don’t, the act of him making the attempt might get Olivia (Zoey Deutch)—the woman Connor has been pining over for years—to stop acting cool and finally acknowledge there’s something between them. Did Greg think the trio would all go home and have sex together? No. His powers were too strong.

As one of many funny lines in Ethan Ogilby’s script explains, however, Connor didn’t have a threesome and get both women pregnant. That verbiage implies simultaneous conception, but the truth will show that neither woman conceived a child that night. What he did was get both women from that threesome pregnant. And while it’s one thing to indelibly link them together for the rest of their lives, it’s another to have the news ostensibly ruin their lives too. Because those tests don’t come back positive until after Connor and Olivia start dating. And the decision to take both to term doesn’t occur lightly.

Chad Hartigan’s The Threesome isn’t an anti-abortion film, though. Far from it. The whole misnomer of the “pro-life” label was to prop up the birth of babies as the goal in a way that incorrectly pretended “pro-choice” advocates were championing death. It’s why anti-abortion and pro-abortion are more accurate terms since the debate has nothing to do with babies at all. It’s about giving mothers autonomy to make a choice rather than legally forcing them into it no matter the circumstances or their health. Yes, Olivia and Jenny do both carry to term—it’s crucial for the film’s comedy and messaging. But they very purposefully weigh that decision.

They must because it’s a complex one. Connor loves Olivia and wants to start a family while also supporting Jenny. Jenny would love for Connor to love her so she won’t have to do this alone regardless of knowing he wouldn’t make her do it alone. And Olivia loves Connor but cannot fathom the chaos or fool herself into thinking things didn’t change upon finding out her boyfriend was fathering a second child. It doesn’t matter that it happened before they became exclusive or that she’s the person who talked him into bringing Jenny home that night. Context can’t simply be ignored, but it also isn’t some magical Band-Aid.

That truth is the film’s biggest strength because the context hose is on full blast throughout its runtime. Not just adding new details to color what’s going on, but also changing the details we already know to make them more complicated insofar as sometimes reversing who feels what about the other. It’s a pretty impressive dance that Hartigan brings to life off the page because the bombshells never cease falling right when we find ourselves lulled into a welcome sense of calm. The pacing and comedic beats are as impeccable as the performances dragging their characters through the emotional wringer that results.

It’s also why Greg plays such a crucial role to the whole. He could have just been the throwaway friend who got the ball rolling, but Ogilby threads him in from start to finish as a sort of outside commentary track reminding us how we’re allowed to laugh at the absurdity. He’s there when Olivia and Jenny inexplicably run into each other at the same OBGYN to cut through Connor’s slack-jawed shock with a truth bomb. He’s there in the Lamaze classes helping to make their threesome a quartet while his husband surely waits at home to hear every juicy detail. Hauer-King is the MVP here and it’s not even a question.

That doesn’t diminish the other actors, though, since the supporting players are expertly cast (Josh Segarra as Olivia’s married fling, Robert Longstreet and Arden Myrin as Jenny’s protective parents, Kristin Slaysman and Allan McLeod as Olivia’s supportive sister and brother-in-law who love grabbing the proverbial popcorn to watch the show, and Julia Sweeney as Connor’s excitable mother) and the three leads know their assignment is first and foremost to authentically traverse this unwitting Ménage à Trois born from a deliberate one. Because big emotions are unavoidable regardless of it being no one’s fault (except Greg’s).

These characters are also never the joke. We aren’t laughing at them for being the stereotypes they label themselves as either. The biggest laughs are a byproduct of their circumstances poking fun at the insanity while also diffusing the unavoidable feelings of pain and sorrow born from it. Everyone ultimately cares about the same thing: protecting the babies. That’s what matters most, regardless of whether any offer romantic love its seat back at the table. Hartman and Ogilby prove the has-beens moaning about how adhering to today’s social climate prevents them from making good comedies are lazy hacks.

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Zoey Deutch in THE THREESOME; courtesy of Vertical.