Prime Photo

Prime

Starring: Meryl Streep, Uma Thurman, Bryan Greenberg, Annie Parisse, Ato Essandoh

Directed by: Ben Younger

RS: 3of 4 Stars

2005 Universal Romantic Comedy

Fluff? Relax. It only sounds like it. Rafi (Uma Thurman) is thirty-seven, divorced and having hot sex with David (Bryan Greenberg), a painter who is twenty-three and living with his grandparents. Rafi's shrink Lisa Metzger (Meryl Streep, of all people) sees nothing wrong with the age gap. Then she learns the stud is her son. Exit Freud. Enter Jewish mother.

What makes Prime a winner is the way writer-director Ben Younger (Boiler Room) blends raucous laughs with touching gravity. Streep is a scream as the New York therapist who can't live with her own advice. Her clothes and makeup skirt caricature, but she doesn't. In her scenes with Greenberg (TV's One Tree Hill), you can feel the affection and the sting. There's a solid humanity in Younger to which the cast responds. The seriously gorgeous Thurman is effortlessly funny and affecting. Younger knows it's fun to watch Rafi and David cross lines of age, culture and religion. He also knows it's painful. That's what makes his movie hilarious and heartfelt.