Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, April 9, 1994                   TAG: 9404110157
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 10   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: By MIKE MAYO CORRESPONDENT
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

`THREESOME' PLOT TAKES TOO MANY TURNS

That's not as contradictory as it sounds. At various times, this low-budget wonder attempts to be comedy, leering exploitation and serious character study. If writer-director Andrew Fleming had decided on one course (preferably the second) and stuck to it, he might have come up with a memorable guilty pleasure. He didn't.

The central character and narrator is Eddy (Josh Charles), a shy, smart college transfer student who's uncertain about his sexual orientation. Computer foul-ups put him in a suite with Stuart (Stephen Baldwin), a stud-muffin hunka-hunka burning love, and Alex (Lara Flynn Boyle), a free-spirited drama major.

Yes, you know exactly where all that is leading as these three sort through their inclinations, both hetero- and homosexual. The plot does take a few inventive twists along the way, though for every time it does something right there's a corresponding moment that scrapes the bottom. For starters, two thirds of the cast does credible work.

Josh Charles makes Eddy a believable and sympathetic character who's finding his way through difficult emotional straits. Lara Flynn Boyle doesn't have as much to work with. As written, Alex swings wildly from airhead to mature collegian to trampy vamp. Her finest line, which may or may not be intentionally funny, comes when she wrestles Eddy to the floor and declares, ``I'll mold you into a heterosexual with my bare hands!''

As for Stephen Baldwin, he probably does about as much as anyone could with this one-dimensional testosterone-driven stereotype. He's certainly aggressive enough, but there's something about his horsey face that's off-putting. (Perhaps it's that lank Baldwin hair that he shares with brothers Alex and William.)

In any case, they do form an odd trio. At the film's best, it manages to capture the dynamics of any small clique. But it goes beyond that to the sexual unions that form and reform within the group. There, not surprisingly, the action ranges from luridly graphic to coy, notably when its homosexual elements come into focus.

The most obvious recent comparison - in terms of the story and the casting - is last year's ``Three of Hearts,'' about relations between and among a male hustler, a lesbian and her ex-girlfriend. But ``Threesome'' really owes more to a much older film, ``Three In the Attic.'' In that 1968 drive-in classic, three young college women compare notes, imprison their philandering beau and attempt to kill him with kindness, so to speak.

Admittedly, those were different times with different conventions and stereotypes. But both ``Three In the Attic'' and ``Threesome'' take the same low road to the same audience.

Threesome **

A Tristar release playing at the Salem Valley 8. 93 min. Rated R for strong sexual content, language, brief nudity.