Prime

If you watched the trailer to “Prime”, and equate the title to an adult’s sexual prime, you already have a good idea about what there is to review. The movie is both a sex comedy and a drama that is a strong PG-13. According to IMDb it was originally rated R, but on appeal re-rated down to its current PG-13 status.

It opens up with Rafi (Uma Thurman) discussing her divorce with her counselor, Lisa (Maryl Streep). After this first scene, Rafi meets and gets sexually involved with David (Bryan Greenberg). She then tells Lisa intimate details about her sexual encounters with David, neither of them knowing that he is Lisa’s son.

When Lisa does figure out David’s identity, she contemplates what she ought to do as both mother and counselor. She decides to continue counseling Rafi without telling of her relationship to David, but eventually has to confess. At this point, conflict arises between every pair of main characters, and in the end, Rafi and David have to make up their own minds on where their relationship is headed.

Two things seem to have doomed “Prime” before it even started. The movie equates having sex with demonstrating love. In a non-marital relationship, sex demonstrates many things, but true love isn’t one of them. True love really is willing to wait for a commitment from both partners. Rafi is David’s third sex partner, and he has a fourth one before the end of the movie. How is he supposed to be a positive character when he doesn’t care enough about the girl he “loves”?

Another difficulty is that many of the scenes needed to be changed or edited out completely. Several different conflicts were written into the story, but none of them were resolved in the end. Other parts were slow, hard to understand or unrelated to the plot.

In addition to the 40 plus obscenities and profanities, there is a constant use of sexually explicit clothing, discussion and implied (or actual) sex. These include several extended lovemaking scenes between David and Rafi, Rafi talking about David’s genitals to Lisa, and a weekend stay by the couple at a homosexual resort run by some of Rafi’s friends.

Considering this was a comedy, there wasn’t much laughter from the audience. It just wasn’t that funny. Even if you like this kind of movie, I think you will be disappointed. You might want to save your money and wait for the DVD. If this isn’t your forte, you may want to skip it altogether.

Violence: Minor / Profanity: Heavy / Sex/Nudity: Extreme

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