Prime (Widescreen)

 

Picture: B     Sound: B-     Extras: C+     Film: C+

 

 

Writer/director Ben Younger makes a daring attempt at a romantic comedy about and for mature, serious, intelligent adults with Prime, his 2005 feature film debut about a strange triangle that develops that has to do with love and family.  Instead of the usual love triangle, Rafi (Uma Thurman) is a beautiful older woman who is not happy with her life and is seeing a therapist (Meryl Streep) who is very good at offering her the best advice and support she could hope for.  Suddenly, she meets David (Bryan Greenberg) who is an exciting, younger man.  14 years younger, as a matter of fact.

 

The connection and attraction is instant, on so many levels.  This development makes her therapist very happy, as long as it is not causing new problems and false hopes.  That is until her doctor figures out that the man in question is her son!  At first, she tries to “handle” the situation and even complicate it, but instead of the usual idiot plot we would get, the film stretches into other directions.  Part of it is about David’s Jewish family, another is about the love between the couple and part of it is the comedy.  Though ambitious, the film still does not gel or come together, despite some interesting chemistry between the couple and one of Streep’s better performances of late.

 

Despite fewer jokes, there needed to be more about the relationships and particularly the love between the age-differenced couple.  There are some beautiful moments between them that goes far beyond the kind of sappy melodrama we have been getting too much of since the 1980s, which furthers the impression that the film had the potential for a huge bull’s-eye and misses the mark.  However, it is worth a look just alone on the basis that it is the kind of film attempted.  Jon Abrahams is also truly funny as David’s supportive buddy, making the incompleteness of the film that much more unfortunate.

 

The anamorphically enhanced 1.85 X 1 looks cleaner, clearer and better than expected, shot by cinematographer William Rexer with very solid shots throughout.  Definition is exceptional more often than not, with nice detail in the better shots.  Even better, the Rexer and Younger team did the smartest thing that is so obvious that most filmmakers still miss it; they did not portray any of the character’s anxiety in the film by using shaky camerawork!

 

The Dolby Digital 5.1 mix is dialogue based, yet has some nice soundfield items going for it.  DTS would have been a more engaging extra choice, but this will do.  Extras include deleted scenes that should have stayed in the film, funny outtake bloopers, making of featurette and a pretty good audio commentary by Younger and producer Jennifer Todd.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo