Prime (2005)

Review by All Movie Guide
Ben Younger's Prime fails as a credible romance, but has a pair of performances that make it somewhat worthwhile. Uma Thurman is an actress whose beauty consistently makes people underestimate her talent. She has made her thirtysomething divorcée thrillingly alive with the promise of a new love. During the therapy scenes where she discusses the joy and pleasure she gets from this new relationship, she quivers with such happiness that the audience will be swept along by her feelings. Thurman gets pitch-perfect support from Meryl Streep, who allows her therapist character to take a motherly pride on behalf of her patient, a maternal instinct that warps entertainingly when she learns the identity of her patient's boyfriend. Prime fails because the character of the young twentysomething lover is always either a perfect young man or a callous immature jerk. There is never a scene in which the actor (Bryan Greenberg) is forced to play these two poles of his character at the same time. He is always 100-percent selfish or 100-percent selfless, making it harder and harder to accept that Thurman would hang onto him for as long as she does seeing as her divorce has taught her when a relationship is dead. Prime is a well-acted film that fails to make losing love as interesting as discovering it. ~ Perry Seibert, All Movie Guide