Review: Prime

Posted by: Tom Milroy  •  October 28, 2005 @ 11:59am

Filed under: Reviews

When Meryl Streep was pitched a movie about a younger man and an older woman, she was excited. Then she found out she was the younger man's mother. Uma Thurman was the older woman.

As written and directed by Ben Younger (Boiler Room), Prime seems like two different movies. The first half is very good as Bryan Greenberg, playing the 23-year-old man, falls for Uma Thurman's 37-year-old character. She's a gentile. He's Jewish. She likes jazz by John Coltrane. He's never heard of John Coltrane. To complicate matters and thus give this movie a point, her therapist just happens to be his mother. Why she's in therapy is never really explored, except she just got divorced.

As usual, Meryl Streep is terrific as the mom who wants her son to marry someone his own age and more important, marry someone who is Jewish. So, they get together, they break-up, they get together again, and so on and so on. If Prime sounds like a chick flick, I suppose it is, but when those "chicks" are Meryl Streep and Uma Thurman, you could do worse. Both actresses are in their prime.

The first half gets 3.5, the second half gets 2.5, for an average of 3.