Prime (2005)
Grade:A
Instead of explaining why practically everything in Prime works so brilliantly, let me instead explain why common complaints of the film are, quite frankly, wrong.
The film’s plot is unbelievable: Every moment of this film seems real and the characters’ actions are all justified. Roger Ebert was angered by this film because of its “Idiot Plot” where the characters don’t act like real people and are stuck in a screenplay of contrived situations. Why is it (supposedly) contrived? There’s a plot twist that the marketing conveniently ruins in the advertising, so I’ll ruin it here as well. Meryl Streep plays Lisa, Uma Thurman’s shrink. Uma’s Rafi has just started dating Bryan Greenberg’s David. David is 23 and Rafi is 37. Oh, and it turns out that David’s mother is Lisa.
Ho ho ho. We have the basic conflict here and the whole movie centers on this hilarious misunderstanding. Wrong! The film does NOT turn into an exploitation of this little tidbit. For an hour, this film is merely a love story between Rafi and David. They have chemistry, they’re, quite frankly, a very sexy couple to watch, and the film has more than enough material to work with based on the trials and tribulations of their relationship. Lisa’s role as therapist and mother provides comedy to the story and another obstacle for the pair to overcome; it is not a contrivance of the screenplay.
Meryl Streep is over the top: I think there’s a unwritten law that dictates that she can’t give a bad performance (see also Naomi Watts, Tom Hanks, or Nicole Kidman). Here, she’s the comedic center. Who knew?! If her acceptance speech for Best Actress (for Angels in America) at the Golden Globes was any indication, she’s at least funny in real life: “There are some days when even I think I’m overrated. But not tonight!”
In Prime, Streep’s comedic talents are on display. Steep is largely a dramatic actress, but she gives a perfectly realized comedic performance here as well. Many of the laughs come from her, but they also come from Thurman and Greenberg as well, who match Streep in their scenes with her. Thurman delivers a particularly funny line when describing David’s penis: “It’s so nice I just want to… knit it a hat.” This is a film where the comedy comes from the screenplay, yes, but is also funnier because of the delivery and timing of the actors.
All Lisa has to do is say that she knows about Rafi and David and then we wouldn’t have a film: Once Lisa realizes that the younger man that Rafi describes in her therapy sessions is indeed her own son, there is an immediate conflict that Lisa recognizes and addresses – with her own therapist. Lisa’s reasons for holding on to her knowledge of their relationship is explained fully and because this misunderstanding isn’t the basis of the film, even if she did reveal that she knew about Rafi and David, we’d still have a film. This is a movie about their relationship, not about the hilarity that is bound to ensue when Rafi explains to Lisa that she and David have “had sex on every surface of (her) apartment.”
In short: I loved this film. The small parts that don’t work are so overshadowed by the rest of the film that I am willing to call it perfection. The Whacky Best Friend® of David is so poorly written that you wonder if someone bet writer-director Ben Younger that he could write this character in and still make a good movie. It’s baffling that with such witty writing throughout 98% of the film, a character whose main gag is to throw cream pies in the faces of girls who dump him pops up.
Aside from that, this is a film that has everything you want in a romantic comedy. There’s romance with a couple that, by the end of the film, we are completely rooting for. There’s comedy that is natural and not forced. And, for the cinema buff, there’s an ending that doesn’t conform to what the romantic comedy formula dictates should happen. Please go seek this out; you’ll be glad you did.
Bottom Line:
Prime is (except for one small part) romantic comedy perfection with the three leads delivering great performances in a film that has volumes to say about love and relationships.
© 2004-2009 Ben Waldorf. Posted November 07, 2005. IMDB