Prime

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 was initially reluctant to watch this film but my girlfriend wanted to check it out. After seeing it I must admit that the film did surpass my expectations - primarily since I felt that it was not really a "chick-flick" per se. The film tends to center around the guy 100% of the time. Call it a "guy-flick" from a woman's perspective. While I'm not at all a Meryl Streep fan, I felt that she carried the movie for the time that she was on the screen. Uma Thurman can't help but be the stunningly beautiful Uma Thurman that she always is. Without spoiling anything, I think that the ending was perfectly real compared to most romantic comedies that have been released in the past. This film was one of the more pleasant surprises for me this year. At the very least it will make for a great DVD rental if you're a guy who is as reluctant to see it as I was originally.

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-

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.

This is a situational movie. People get into and out of interesting situations and you might be amused by it, feel romantic or feel bad, but this does not define the romantic comedy genre as I see it. You don't watch this movie to feel good about the romantic endeavors that litter your brain but are almost never real, nor do you watch it to laugh at what is going on.

I especially liked the fact that Uma Thruman didn't play the role of the stupid blonde that she got in some of her latest movies and also that the movie tried to capture reality more than fantastic situations that no one can relate to and that always end in happy ending.

Mix Jewishness, visits to the psychologist, divorcées in the fashion business having gay friends and dating younger guys and you get ... New York. :) Well, this is a good movie. A lot of the clichés one would expect in a New Yorkish movie are broken or not existent and the ones that are left are well blended into the plot.

There isn't much to say about the plot that wouldn't spoil it, so I will not say anything. Uma Thurman plays well, Merryl Streep is always a good actress, but in this movie manages not the be annoying as well, which I think is a step up for her. My wife asked me to keep it, so I guess if I enjoyed it and also did she, then it's a winner all around.