In many ways, “Prime” is a pleasant enough throwback movie, a gentle romantic comedy with a wistful undertone. And yet this movie couldn’t end soon enough for me.
Maybe it’s the labored, sitcom-style plot device upon which the whole thing depends. Or the way the people on screen have a tendency to laugh at the jokes. But whatever it is, tedium kicks in around the halfway point.
Here’s the setup: Rafi (Uma Thurman) is a chic 37-year-old New Yorker, newly divorced. David (Bryan Greenberg) is a 23-year-old artist living with his grandparents. They meet, click, and aren’t going to let the age difference matter. Well, not much.
Rafi sees a therapist, a thoughtful type named Lisa (Meryl Streep). Rafi tells Lisa everything, including the most intimate details about her new beau. The more Lisa hears about this hot young stud, the more she realizes Rafi’s lover is someone she knows all too well. Ewwww.
| Labored: A comedy that relies on a somewhat labored premise for most of its comedy: 37-year-old Uma Thurman meets a 23-year-old beau, and tells all to an increasingly uncomfortable therapist (Meryl Streep).
Rated: PG-13 rating is for language, subject matter. on |
Meryl Streep has such dead-on comic instincts that she gets maximum laughs out of Lisa’s horror and anguish at recognizing who David is. Continuing on as Rafi’s therapist is, of course, a major professional no-no, which the movie gladly bypasses in favor of comedy.
That’s the major gimmick. The film adds familiar religious differences on top of that: David’s family is Jewish, while Rafi is as shiksa as they come.
This mild mixture comes from writer-director Ben Younger, who made the overrated “Boiler Room,” a very different kind of film. Younger aims for that “Annie Hall” feel, and there’s something undeniably refreshing about a comedy that’s not geared for teenagers (or 40-year-old virgins). But that’s not enough.
Leading man Bryan Greenberg, a regular on TV’s “One Tree Hill,” has a genial if low-watt presence. Uma Thurman is certainly a good advertisement for sexy 37-year-olds, although I always find her a little too spacey to be right on top of comedy. She could take some lessons from Streep, whose scalpel-like skill at cutting up dialogue is as sharp as ever.
Meryl Streep (left) and Uma Thurman star in “Prime.”
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