DVD Review: THE THIRD WHEEL / Jordan Brady (2002)

May 30th, 2008 by Scott Marks

The Third Wheel (2002)
Directed by Jordan Brady
Written by Jay Lacopo
Starring: Luke Wilson, Denise Richards, Jay Lacopo and Ben Affleck
Running Time: 91 min.
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1

Rating:

A friend cramped for space and too lethargic to post them on eBay gave me a stack of DVD screeners that I’ve been trying to auction off. With the exception of Charles Burnett’s The Glass Cube, which wouldn’t sell for ninety-nine cents, there wasn’t anything in the bag that I would ever again sit through or for that matter wanted to see in the first place.

The Third Wheel was another title that wouldn’t sell for a buck if it came with a five-dollar bill wrapped around it. There are eighty-one new and used copies on Amazon starting at thirty-cents, plus two dollars for shipping. You can currently purchase one of the thirty-seven copies available on eBay. Not one of the twenty copies put up for auction last month sold.

Looks like I won myself a DVD.

Before she was eternally dirtied by Charlie Sheen, Denise Richards was the bomb. She appeared to me on The Last Weekend episode of Saved by the Bell…alone, out of the open sewer. They cannot…touch…her…beauty…

She received Joe Dante’s dispensation on an episode of Erie, Indiana as well as appearing in Starship Troopers by Paul Verhoeven’s decree. And if you haven’t seen Tammy and the T-Rex, go ahead. I dare you. You can plant corn in her eyebrows!

Her nude menage in Wild Things will go down in smut history as one of the great R rated sex scenes ever filmed. Before Charlie and a network sitcom muddied the waters, she was poised to become her genrations’ Linda Blair. Denise’s unnatural delivery is easily the most enjoyable aspect of The World is Not Enough, but Valentine is deadly dull.

In The Third Wheel, Luke Wilson plays a shy office worker who spends months admiring Denise from afar. He finally gets the nerve to ask her out and, of course, she accepts. Their idyllic first date is constantly interrupted by a homeless con man (Jay Lacopo) who likes to hurl himself in front of their moving auto.

Lacopo, who also wrote the script, received a thanks in Good Will Hunting’s closing crawl. Two of The Third Wheel’s ten producers are Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, both of who play roles in the film. So much for how the film got financed.

The Third Wheel never received a theatrical release in the States and for the life of me, I can’t honestly say this is any worse than half of the jack Black or Adam Sandler vehicles lining video store shelves. It makes Nacho Libre look like Sherlock, Jr. And Miss Richards is surprisingly good, dare I say naturalistic, as the object of desire. Not quite a performance, but better than anything before or since.

You probably sense from my tone that I am not into giving The Third Wheel a flat tire. Every now and then I come across a film that was worth the effort for one single shot. It’s not enough to entirely redeem the film: if anything a moment of grace emerging in the most unlikely of places can only slightly soften the memories of clumsy execution that came before it.

The last shot in the film is worthy of Frank Borzage. Boy and girl have fallen in love and are seated at an outdoor table enjoying a first kiss while the audience waits for the obligatory spielberg pan-up to the moon. The camera begins to dolly and for a moment appears to want to tilt skyward. Suddenly, the table and its two occupants begin moving with the camera as a hydraulic lift gracefully elevates them through the tree branches and out of sight. It is a lush, beautifully executed bit of movie magic that caps an otherwise routine romantic comedy.

Years from now, after time further blurs a memory already overloaded with statistics, I’ll stumble across The Third Wheel and think for a moment whether or not I had seen it. “I don’t remember seeing it in a theater,” I’ll mutter aloud to the nurse. Once all the pieces fall into place, I guarantee you that whatever remains of my mind will immediately race to the curtain shot. Hey, I know where you can get a copy for $2.30!