Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with an early review of a flick called PRIME that doesn't come out until October. This film stars Uma Thurman, Meryl Streep and Unscripted's Bryan Greenberg. The review is middle of the road, but it's likely that a screening this early still means the film is in the sculpting phase. From the sounds of it the three leads give really solid performances, so the film may be molded into something better than the shakey-hand it seems to be at now. Enjoy the review!!!
Hey, Harry and friends. Bungion Boy back here again with a review of "Prime," the new romantic dramedy from Boiler Room's Ben Younger, which I just saw tonight in New York. I really don't know what to make of this movie. It seems like it's trying to be so many things at once and isn't very successful at being any of them. The film struggles with tone problems from the very beginning as Uma Thurman's character, Rafi, at an appointment with her therapist, played by Meryl Streep. Rafi has just gotten divorced and is now thinking about her romantic future and the possibility of her one day having children. The films trailer is trying to market this as a comedy, but the opening of the film, and several other scenes throughout are a little more dramatic, and occasionally melodramatic. Now this wouldn't be a bad thing if this is what the movie wants to do be, but immediately after this scene we meet David (played by Bryan Greenberg who was seen getting the part and acting in this movie in HBO's noble failure Unscripted) as he is accompanying his sociopath friend in his post-date ritual of throwing a cream pie in the face of the woman who has rejected him. Suddenly it feels like we're watching a slapstick comedy, which again wouldn't be bad if it didn't contrast with the other scenes so much. David is a struggling artist who meets Rafi one night at a screening of Blow-Up. That night we get one of those scenes when a character holds a phone in his hand, trying to call the girl he met, and constantly hanging up. Eventually David and Rafi do go out and soon the two are in love. All during this time Rafi is telling Streep about her relationship in her therapy sessions and asking her for guidance on some of the issues that trouble her about it, like the fact that Rafi is 14 years older than David, and so on. What neither character knows though is that David is actually Streep's son, and there we have our romantic farce set up.
It doesn't take Streep long to figure out whom Rafi's new boyfriend is, and as soon as that happens the movie brings back silly comic situations again. We get at least three scenes in which Rafi is graphically describing sex and David's penis to his mother and she can do nothing but cringe and react, without letting Rafi know that she knows who he really is. Streep is a great actress and her reactions are very funny, but that's not enough because while her performance in these scenes is strong, the scenes themselves aren't that good or funny. Streep's character feels very authentic and realistic, both as a therapist and Jewish mother, but the movie keeps putting her in stupid and silly situations, such as running into the couple in Crate and Barrel and trying to hide from them, which feel forced in the rest of the world that the movie has tried to create.
The rest of the movie struggles with the same problems. This was troubling for me because some of the more serious scenes work quite well, but for each of the scenes that feel like they're from a better movie, there is another scene that ends up ridiculing the situation and bring the movie back from whatever progress it may have made. Take, for instance, an early scene in which Streep talks to David about how important her religion is to her and that she really wants him to marry a Jewish girl. It's an honest and funny scene that feels very realistic about issues of faith in relationships, but it's followed with lame jokes about Manischewitz wine and flashbacks of David's grandmother who looks like she's in a high school production of Fiddler on the Roof.
Eventually Streep comes clean to Rafi, things get awkward, the three make up, and then Streep is almost completely dropped from the film. Once they don't need her to act as an obstacle for the two lovers to get over the film decides that it doesn't need her anymore, which is a real shame. There is lots of other relationship stuff that follows, some of which is handled well, some of which isn't, and as much as I was relieved that the film didn't end with an Along Came Hitch moment of a misunderstanding driving the lovers apart, requiring one to chase the other to an airport or something to get them back at the last second, I can't say I was pleased with the alternative that they chose. A key speech at the end of the film that explains what will be the future of their relationship is done in whispers as David is lying on top of Rafi in bed. If they're going to go for a meaningful climax, I would at least appreciate the characters to speak at a level that I can hear them.
The movie isn't all bad but it's not terribly interesting either. I liked some of the dialogue in the film. There were a lot of serious kinds of discussions that you don't hear in films that often, but one of the reasons for that is that they can sometimes overstay their welcome and get a little boring. After several of these discussions the film started to feel like it was trying to imitate some of Woody Allen's more dramatic comedies like Melinda & Melinda, Stardust Memories, and Crimes and Misdemeanors, but it's never as good as any of those films. I also liked some of the editing and use of flashbacks when Rafi is describing past events to Streep. All three performances are pretty good. Meryl Streep shows that she is able to rise above any mediocre material and shows that she can still be very funny, like she has been before in films like Defending Your Life, Death Becomes Her, and Adaptation. She's very strong throughout, but underused and almost unnecessary, as far as the film seems to be concerned. Uma Thurman looks stunningly beautiful and gives probably her best non-Tarentino performance since Mad Dog and Glory. The bland woodenness that I sometimes see in her in films like The Avengers, Gattaca, and Be Cool is not to be found here. And Bryan Greenberg makes a fine if not very thrilling debut in his first real film. He feels like a regular guy in this film and his non-star status works in his favor, but it doesn't give me a very good impression of what he would be like in other films. All in all this film wasn't terrible, but certainly could have used a few rewrites. For a much better oddly matched couple in confrontation with family story, I would recommend "Junebug" which I just saw last week and loved. I believe there is a good story to be told with these characters but first Younger has to figure out what that story is, rather than just try to make a romantic/comedy/drama, when he can?t really nail any of those genres on their own.
-Bungion Boy
