Stale bait: Greenberg and Thurman photo: Andrew Schwartz Prime Written and directed by Ben Younger Universal, opens October 28 more film most popular most commented Kabluey Tracking Shots by Jim Ridley Thoda Pyaar Thoda Magic by McCann, Ruth Diminished Capacity Tracking Shots by Nick Pinkerton Holding Trevor Tracking Shots by Julia Wallace We Are Together Tracking Shots by Ella Taylor Trash Talking With Harvey Weinstein by Tony Ortega Coming and Then Licking It Up. Is This a Gay Thing? Savage Love by Dan Savage At Home With Competitive Swallowers Crazy Legs and Eater X by Andy Kropa Gene Simmons and the Whores He Admires La Dolce Musto by Michael Musto Columbia's Knotty Noose Problem by Graham Rayman The 'W.' Stands for 'War Criminal' (17) Nat Hentoff Scientology's Crushing Defeat (15) Tony Ortega Runnin' Scared: From Brooklyn, a Rap Campaign Against Tight Clothes (9) Runnin' Scared: Arcynta Ali Childs Runnin' Scared: The City Pitted Kids Against Artists in the East Village (6) Runnin' Scared: Chloé A. Hilliard Savage Love: My Boyfriend Almost Fathered a Lesbian Couple's Baby?!? (5) Savage Love: Dan Savage

Like Rafi's arrested-adolescent suitor, the movie gets everything just a little off. Bless Younger for actually shooting in New York, but since when did Cinema Village show Antonioni double bills? Would a Lower East Side resident go all the way to Magnolia Bakery for pies (as opposed to cupcakes)? The jailbait angle is softened by the fact that Greenberg looks closer to his actual age of 27; in any case, there's not one straight 23-year-old male in the world who would throw over sex with Thurman to play another round of Nintendo, nor is it likely that his stereotypically Jewish mother would go an entire film without once mentioning where her son went to college. The relationship would be easier to root for if Greenberg and Thurman demonstrated something like chemistry, but miscasting makes Younger's third-act complications seem both tentative and arbitrary. Not quite a romance by numbers, Prime is nevertheless a movie we need like a hole in the head.