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
