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Film review

Prime candidate for a rewrite

Prime has just one - charming - conflict. But when it's resolved, too much uncharming movie remains.

By MARTY CLEAR
Published October 27, 2005

[Photo: Universal Pictures]

Rafi (Uma Thurman), right, a recently divorced career woman, talks with her therapist (Meryl Streep) about her new, younger boyfriend in Prime.

It's called Prime apparently because of a single throw-away line that really has nothing to do with the meat of the movie.

A better title would have been Premise. Writer-director Ben Younger has come with just a single, credulity-straining idea, and he has tried to base an entire movie on that one situation.

For maybe 45 minutes, Younger milks the premise, squeezing out some decent laughs and quite a bit of charm. But after that, Younger and his film run dry, and the last half of the film meanders through one painfully predictable and worn-out scene after another to an unsatisfying non-ending.

Recent divorcee Rafi (Uma Thurman) meets and reluctantly falls for a significantly younger man, played disarmingly by Bryan Greenberg. She confides all the details of their burgeoning relationship to her longtime therapist Lisa Metzger (Meryl Streep), including extremely intimate details about his sexuality and anatomy.

Eventually, Lisa figures out that the younger man is actually her 23-year-old son David Bloomberg.

But she keeps that a secret from Rafi, and over the next five weeks she uses their sessions together partly as a way to glean information about her son, and partly as a way to steer the relationship in her preferred path. (She's adamant that her son should marry a Jew and thinks he's wasting his time dating a gentile.)

Certainly, the situation allows some funny lines. And Streep (who is, of course, excellent but somewhat wasted in this role) has her best comic moments when she's trying to conceal her dismay and discomfort from Thurman.

It's the stuff of pedestrian TV sitcoms, not a major theatrical romantic comedy with high-powered stars.

But the three principals all do such great work that, for a while, they can fool you into thinking there's something more substantial here. Thurman has seldom been more charming, and she and Greenberg (a promising actor with no significant movie history) are wonderful together. Streep is so enjoyable to watch that you can forget her character is actually doing something horrible to her son and her patient.

Eventually, Lisa fesses up to Rafi. At that exact moment, the film lets go of its only conflict and loses its way. The excruciating last half of Prime is made up of one lackluster scene after another, with few laughs and no romantic chemistry.

It's kind of a shame, because the first half seems as if it might be a prelude to something promising. It turns out to be a joke that's all premise and no punch line.

Grade: C-

Director: Ben Younger

Cast: Meryl Streep, Uma Thurman, Bryan Greenberg, Jon Abrahams

Screenplay: Ben Younger

Rating: PG-13; sexual content and language

Running Time: 110 minutes

[Last modified October 26, 2005, 10:11:06]