Prime

"Prime" has a number of things going for it that many romantic comedies these days lack. It features a new permutation on the old mistaken-identity plot: 37-year-old divorcée Rafi (Uma Thurman) starts dating carefree 23-year-old David (Bryan Greenberg), neither of them realizing that he is the son of her therapist Lisa (Meryl Streep). There are moments of real wit, the love story is charming without being sentimentally cloying, and the film takes a pleasingly mature, realistic approach to romance.

However, "Prime" also makes many wrong turns along the way. It's never sure how deeply it wants to explore the serious issues raised by its plot—age differences in relationships, inter-religious dating (David is Jewish), and the ethics of Lisa continuing to be Rafi's therapist. Sometimes, it treats these themes with seriocomic intelligence. At other times, it ignores them in favor of sitcom humor involving David's jerky best friend or Rafi's gay co-workers.

"Prime" eventually becomes David's story, focusing on how dating Rafi helps him mature. But this often seems like the wrong choice. Cheerful David is the least conflicted of the three main characters, and Greenberg, while a competent actor, doesn't have Thurman- or Streep- level charisma. Thus, even though this clearly wasn't the intent, many David-centered scenes feel like padding. The best parts of the movie are the scenes between the two actresses: Streep's awkward, pained reactions as Thurman glowingly describes her new boyfriend are priceless.

A great, great movie, especially when one considers the stinkers that usually litter the romantic comedy landscape.

This movie was smart, funny and most importantly, REAL. The cheese is held to a minimum and characters do and say things that real people say. No monologues that sound like they were cribbed from 'Chicken Soup for the Soul', just real people reacting to each other and their circumstances.

Meryl Streep is great in this (and this is coming from a straight, twenty-something male) and Uma Thurman and Brian Greenberg have a real chemistry together. There are some real classic lines in this and it's a million times funnier and smarter than say, 'Monster in Law' or 'Just Like Heaven'.

As one who usually cringes my way through 9 out of 10 'chick flicks' this is the rare one out the ten that passes muster, and does so in a big way. I fear that this movie will be overshadowed by a bunch of other new releases when it comes out, but this one really deserves an audience.

Very underrated. One of the better films I've seen all year.

Meryl Streep is the closest actress we've got to the great old stars of yesteryear. Bette Davis comes to mind. Meryl was trim and sexy a couple of years a ago in "Adaptation" now in "Prime" she's a matronly Jewish mom filled with sense and sensibility. She is also very funny and the main reason to see this Jewish American farce. When she's on, we're on. I believed and enjoyed her predicament. I only wish the script, dealing with the relationship of Uma Thurman and Bryan Greenberg had been a bit smarter and more engaging. I bought that the sex was great and that Uma was discovering herself through this younger lover but their intimacy is clumsy and their dialogue very slight. It is as if the two Kauffman's of "Adaptation" were at work here and that the scenes involving Meryl were written by one and the scenes with the lovers by the other. The former ones however makes the evening a very pleasant one.

I happened to catch the second half on HBO one night. I saw the entire movie a few nights later. I could easily watch it through again -- I was really drawn into the movie. I had to look it up on IMDb just because I was thinking about it so much.

There's a lot of negative reviews here, much more than the movie deserves. Movies are like people -- some you despise, many leave you indifferent, and some just really *click*. My roommate came back from "Saw III" hyper and proclaiming it the "BEST movie EVER!!!" -- I can guarantee you he wouldn't care for this. "Prime" also doesn't have any of the typical emotional manipulations found in your average rom-com. It makes do with much subtler if still dramatic material. For example: the meeting between Rafi and David is low-key, slightly awkward, nothing like, say, the Ferris wheel scene in "The Notebook". Ryan Gosling threatening suicide to get a date is certainly entertaining, but it also leaves me slightly detached, too aware this is a story for my viewing pleasure.

"Prime" is the anti-"Grease". There's nothing STYLIZED about it; no fairy-tale ending. If you can do with such accoutrements you'll be sucked in, especially if you can relate to the very upper-middle-class New York viewpoint that permeates it. Another reviewer was quite insightful in comparing it to "Annie Hall".

As for the relentless disparagement of Bryan Greenberg in the male lead: you've got to be kidding me!!!! He doesn't play the role the way, say, a young Al Pacino would play it. His persona is understated, relaxed almost to the point of passivity, slightly unsure, sarcastic and naive and vulnerable all at once. Completely believable as a 23-year-old who would appeal to and be attracted to a 37-yr-old divorcée. A more typical male lead his age wouldn't be dating Uma Thurman, he'd be charming Natalie Portman or Jessica Alba. Take the scene where he's trying to connect with the stoic doorman -- I totally cracked up and at the same time couldn't help but admire how true-to-life it felt. Everything about that scene bespoke an upper-middle-class 20-something living with his grandparents and lacking direction.

Not to mention that the intimacy between Rafi and David felt so natural that I felt convinced that Uma and Bryan had something off-screen during filming. The way they looked at each other, shared each other's space... the lust didn't seem acted, I'll put it that way.

To Ben Younger: despite all the people out there who don't get it, there are some of us who do. You really did an amazing job, and I doubt I'll ever forget "Bubbe" knocking herself with that frying pan... Lol.

Midway through "Prime," there's a scene in which Uma Thurman's character, Rafi, comes to her boyfriend's (Bryan Greenberg) house for dinner with his family. His mom, played by Meryl Streep, as usual giving a performance better than the movie it's in, has up until very recently been Rafi's therapist. The women must now navigate very tricky terrain. A relationship that had been maternal in one way has now become maternal in a very different way. The therapist loves Rafi and thinks she's a wonderful person, but she also knows much about her that prospective mothers-in-law don't necessarily know about their sons' girlfriends, things that compound the problems raised by Rafi's not only being 14 years older than the son, but also decidedly NOT Jewish.

I wish more of "Prime" had been about this relationship, the one between Thurman and Streep. As it is, the movie feels like it has two separate halves that the young director/writer Ben Younger doesn't successfully bring together into a comprehensive whole. The rest of the film follows Rafi and her boyfriend as they try to build a relationship despite the age difference. Nothing about this half of the movie is new or fresh, and Younger never convinced me why I should care. I was too distracted by the fact that he had a wonderful actress like Streep in his film and didn't seem to know what to do with her.

"Prime" is far from a bad film, and given its indifferent reception when it was released in theatres, I actually expected it to be worse than it was. But it is a rather half-baked film, and not one you need to spend a lot of mental energy on, which in this case is a criticism, because it raises a lot of interesting ideas that it never explores.

Grade: B-