Prime

Starring Meryl Streep, Uma Thurman, and Bryan Greenberg. Rated PG. Opens Friday, October 28, at the Paramount

Navel-gazing over cougar love is getting so old. Just ask Demi. Unfortunately, someone forgot to tell Prime writer-director Ben Younger, and he's devoted an entire movie to the subject.

Thank God the best movie actor in the universe is on hand to generate hilarity as the cradle snatchee's mama. Unaccented, Meryl Streep plays Jewish psychoanalyst Lisa Metzger, parent to 23-year-old unemployed David. Unwittingly, she is also therapist to David's secret love interest, 37-year-old divorced career hotshot Rafi (Uma Thurman). Given that it's supposedly every mother's wish to get inside the head of the woman who dares rip her boy from the maternal bosom, this is a potential comedic gold mine. Mooning around in a collection of chunky, multicoloured necklaces, with dark-rimmed glasses propped over rapidly blinking eyes and a nose that looks like it's forever detecting carp, Streep's entire being emanates 'Holy shiksa!' when the truth comes out. Her scene-stealing in response to Rafi's gushing praise of David's "beautiful" penis brings levity to an otherwise mopey film, and one-liners uttered by David's extended family are on par with those of Seinfeld's TV parents. Regrettably, these moments with the madcap Manhattan Metzgers are precious and few.

Oh, that Younger had built the movie around the couple's religious differences, Rafi's never-questioned reliance on weekly therapy as if it were the adult woman's equivalent of diary writing, or even, given Thurman's stature, height difference. What matters age when there's an emotionally fragile, gentile giant looming over your nice son?

Most of the film, however, focuses on Rafi and David's courtship, plus Rafi's own-and others'-negative reactions to an age gap that wouldn't warrant a movie were the leads' genders reversed. "She's a time fighter!" David's friend exclaims, so aghast you'd think Rafi was pushing 80, with a hump. Now that would have been interesting.

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