DVD Reviews

Prime

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• Starring: Meryl Streep
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Rafi (Thurman) is a recently divorced, career-orientated 37 year-old woman. Dave (Greenberg) is a 23 year-old talented-but-jobless painter with an overbearing Jewish mother (Streep).Rafi and Dave fall in love (aaaaaaah), completely unaware that Dave's mother is in fact Rafi's therapist. If that plot sounds unnecessarily complicated that's because it is. Prime would've worked much better without the whole psychiatrist mother plot. Writer/director Younger seems to want to follow well-tested rules of the romantic comedy formula - on/off relationship, supporting characters offering comic relief - but also add something new. He ultimately fails by injecting too much plot, and not enough character development. There's a wealth of material he could've squeezed out of the not quite May to September romance alone; instead he chooses to allow Streep to showboat, frustratingly taking away from a romance with a lot of potential. Initially Prime works; the getting-to-know-you first third is charming and well played by Greenberg and Thurman. However, it falls apart somewhere in the middle when the plot needlessly ups a gear, and despite a somewhat apt and bittersweet ending, the damage has already been done. Falling somewhere in between The Break-Up and Failure to Launch, Prime is nowhere near as bad as the latter, but lacking both the sublime balance and believable characterisation of the first.

Review by Mike Sheridan