Passable

Noel Vera

Ben Younger's latest movie "Prime" is like a younger version of one
of Woody Allen's romantic comedies, which isn't as bad as you'd
think, but then again isn't saying all that much. Two New Yorkers
meet cute: Rafi Gardet (the always-gorgeous Uma Thurman), and David
Bloomberg (Bryan Greenberg). David chanced upon Rafi at a friend's
dinner party, and calls her; Rafi surprises David (and herself) by
actually saying yes to a date; the two actually have a good time.
Then the shocker (or 'startler,' if you like; it's not actually all
that shocking): David is young, but Rafie, who is 37, never realized
just how young--he's only 23.

Shades of Allen and Soon-Yi, the adopted daughter of Allen's former
lover, Mia Farrow; that David is two years older than the legal
drinking age in America defuses much of the controversy--the most
Rafie is concerned about is what people might think and the huge gap
in sensibility (he's thinking sex, she's thinking children) between
them; David is mostly worried that his Jewish mother will never
approve of a gentile girlfriend. Incidentally, David's mother Lisa
(Meryl Streep, in wig and spectacles) is Rafi's therapist.

Holy Oedipus Complex! The twist is believable while Lisa is unaware
that her patient and her son's shiksa lover are one and the same;
when the light finally dawns (a moment cleverly played by Streep: she
acts like she's probing a trauma she's terrified to--but must--
explore), she's advised (by her own therapist) to keep mum; maybe the
relationship is a passing thing, and if so, she must stand by her
client, give support if necessary.

That was a bit much, I thought; what bothered me wasn't just the
implausibility (say it's important to provide constant care, the
consequences when found out are enormous--as Streep's character does
find out), but the sheer age of the device--the classic romantic-
comedy situation where the lover has to keep his/her true identity
secret, for fear of scaring away/disappointing/angering the beloved,
the rationale for keeping mum being "this is only temporary." But it
never is, of course, and it makes the story even less plausible.

It isn't all bad plotting. Uma Thurman is as desirable as ever, even
when (or especially because) she's all confused and anxious--her Rafi
is shallowly conceived and written, but she pulls it off by acting as
if the lines she's reading aren't at all shallow, that what her
friends might think of her cradle-snatching IS the most important
thing in her life, that what her Jewish in-law-to-be might think of
her IS the most important challenge in her life, that having sex with
a younger man at his sexual prime IS the most wonderful thing to ever
happen to her. Thurman makes her character care so much for these
relatively petty problems and that relatively petty pleasure that we
can't help being caught up with them too--we can't help thinking her
character is more engaging and complex than she really is.

As for Meryl Streep--I've always maintained that she's better in
comedies than drama, and this middling little comedy is one more in a
line of comedies that I think prove my point. She's too intellectual,
too much of a thinker to actually move you to tears, but when she
uses all that intelligence and thought to make her character look
silly, she's brilliant. I would never believe that old gag about a
doctor maintaining one set of standards for her patients and another
for her family would still be funny, but Streep pulls it off, because
you'd never expect such inconsistency from her; it's like watching
one of those "Star Trek" supercomputers sputter helplessly over a
logical paradox.

What else? After the relentless machismo of Younger's previous
work "Boiler Room," I'd never expect him to make a picture where the
women were actually somewhat better drawn than the men, but here it
is: maybe the only male in the movie that readily stays in memory is
Morris (Jon Abraham), mainly because he's such a hostile little
creep, and as such stands out in this gallery of largely toothless
caricatures.

It's not a bad film, and it does serve one invaluable function--it
reminds me of just how good Woody Allen's work is, or used to be.
Younger divides the Allen persona between his two leads--she's
neurotic and anxious and self-conscious, he's Jewish--and you can see
why Allen's way works better: he's all the comic elements in one
package, reacting to the desirability of his complacently gentile
girlfriends. It's funnier probably because it's simpler; the comic
energy isn't diluted or parceled out among different people. There's
also the blunt physical fact that Allen isn't (and never was) the
kind of young 'hunk' women love to ogle, which Bryan Greenberg is
supposed to be (though I don't know about the hairless chest--for
some reason I find hairless male chests unsettling). It gives away
part of Younger's game: he obviously wants the audience to
unqualifiedly love his two beautiful leads, the way we do in
traditional romantic comedies.

Part of what made Allen's comedies different was that the women may
be beautiful, but he--Allen--and not some 'young hunk' was the hero;
a scrawny, bespectacled nebbish with an at best ambivalent, at worst
hostile, relationship with the world. No one believes in him; no one
thinks he can get the girl, or win the day, or do anything, and when
he does, we cheer him on despite or even because of his physical
unattractiveness, thinking "if someone like him can charm someone
like Diane Keaton/Mariel Hemingway/Mia Farrow, I've got a fighting
chance!" He's the frog prince who manages to avoid the stewing pot,
slay the dragon, find the Holy Grail and even win the princess, and
he never has to change--he stays a frog. He was better than sexy, he
was subversive, satiric, self-critical, all at once. We may probably
see the likes or even better of the early Allen in some of today's
comedies--Alexander Payne captures some of his middle-class angst,
Wes Anderson shows something of his free-wheeling imagination--but
not in Younger, not really, and not in this movie.

(First posted in Businessworld, 11/25/30)

(Comments? Email me at noelbotevera@...)