film | Lover from another generation

She's 37, divorced and a bombshell photography coordinator! He's a 23-year-old aspiring-artist hardbody who lives with his grandparents! They have a great spark and even better sex, but what neither of them has is the slightest clue that his doting Jewish mother is the therapist to whom she relates the steamy details of their relationship — this fall on ABC!

So goes PRIME, a thoroughly unremarkable romantic dramedy with the aura of a clunky TV sitcom, albeit one that partially counters its ho-hum narrative and bland characterizations with pleasant chemistry of Uma Thurman and Bryan Greenberg (from HBO's Unscripted) as the unlikely couple. They meet in a cineplex lobby after simultaneously getting locked out of the theater showing their Michelangelo Antonioni double-feature, a scene that might've been cute if it didn't make you wonder: A) why nobody thinks to look for an usher; and B) what kind of screening room needs doors that deadbolt shut. But those are tiny contrivances compared to Greenberg's shrink mom (Meryl Streep) continuing to advise Thurman after she deduces that her favorite patient is also her son's shiksa girlfriend. You say "oy gevalt," I say "huge conflict of interest."

This leads to stagy sequences in which Streep turbo-kvetches while Thurman graphically fawns over her inexperienced but virile new beau's sexual prowess ("His penis was so beautiful i wanted to knit it a little hat!"), and it's kinda sad to see the endlessly acclaimed screen legend stuck in a role that's mostly a matzo-thin parade of twitchy tics. The film actually doesn't need the religious angle at all — hello, it's called Prime, not Gentile — but at least Streep's brassy caricature provides something resembling a pulse. Despite Thurman and Greenberg's best efforts, the age-difference interplay (How Uma Got Her Groove Back?) unspools in such pedestrian, connect-the-dots lethargy that you're grateful for the distraction.

Director/writer Ben Younger previously helmed the macho stock-scam thriller Boiler Room in 2000. That movie was testosterrific. Prime, comparatively, is estrogeneric. C-