MBunge Imagine eating an Oreo cookie with the cream filling removed or a jelly donut with the jelly sucked out of it. The cookie sides of the Oreo and the donut itself would still be tasty, but you wouldn't be getting what you wanted or expected out of either. The experience would not be unpleasant, just unsatisfying. The Prime Gig is a film where most of the conflict has been extracted. There are still things to enjoy while watching it, but it's a fundamentally boring story.Penny (Vince Vaughn) is a salesman, currently selling travel packages of dubious legality in a bottom-of-the-barrel telemarketing firm. He's the most successful one in the storefront office, which is a little like being the thinnest fat person at Weight Watchers. The rest of the crew are either desperate losers or bitter malcontents.When that job goes up in smoke, Penny is recruited to work for Kelly Grant (Ed Harris), a legendary figure of somewhat questionable business practices. Grant claims to have a gold mine worth $30 million and needs Penny and a warehouse full of other phone salespeople to get $2.5 million worth of investors to sign on to the project. Penny thinks it's a scam, even after Grant goes to extravagant lengths to prove otherwise, but doesn't care as long as he gets paid immediately for every sale he makes. The tempting presence of Grant's beautiful associate, Caitlin (Julia Ormond), is also on Penny's mind and other, more southern parts of his anatomy.While all that's going on, Penny is also trying to help a childhood friend named Joel (Rory Cochrane). Joel is crippled, lazy, pretentious and self-destructive. Why Joel is all of those things and why Penny makes extraordinary efforts to help him is never explained or even hinted at.After a rough start, Penny begins to rack up sales and boink the hell out of Caitlin. That just goes on for a while, giving Vince Vaughn and Julia Ormond a few decent scenes together and then the story simply swirls down the drain. There's a twist at the end that is pulled off in the most backasswards way imaginable and Penny is left to walk down the sidewalk as the closing credits roll.As I mentioned earlier, there are some good things in The Prime Gig. Vaughn and Ormond are very engaging. She also shows off a breast, which is greatly appreciated. The crew at the storefront, including Wallace Shawn, George Wendt and Stephen Tobolowsky, are very entertaining in their misery. It's also fun to listen to Penny and the rest of Grant's team try to manipulate people into investing in the supposed gold mine.All of that is undermined by the tedious lack of conflict in this movie. Some exists at the beginning, where everyone at the storefront is angry with each other and fearful of losing their jobs. It all disappears when Penny joins up with Grant. There's no meaningful conflict between Penny and Grant, Penny and Caitlin, Grant and Caitlin, Penny and the salesman competing with him to be number one, Penny and Joel, Caitlin and Joel or really any other combination of characters. There's a silly attempt late in the film at inner conflict with Penny, but it's so contrived that no one could take it seriously.The bottom line of The Prime Gig is that you spend the last two-thirds of the movie waiting for anything to happen and nothing does, until something happens at the very end that you knew was going to happen from the first second Kelly Grant was mentioned. This film has a few moments of interest breaking up the dullness, like driving through Nebraska and seeing topless hitchhiker every 150 miles, but unless you've got really long attention span, this movie isn't worth your time.

jehaccess6 I bought the DVD for Julia Ormond. She played a really rotten character in this film, in contrast to her other efforts. I had never heard of Vince Vaughn before, I thought his performance was adequate.This film is like something from an art-house. No attempt to have a hero or uplifting theme. The whole focus is on a group of very nasty people who never hesitate to turn on each other.Other comments have noted the wordplay involved in the main character's name 'Penny Wise'. It must have been an inside joke for the screen writers to lighten their gloomy script.The whole premise of the film left me somewhat confused. The Ed Harris character "Kelly Grant' is fresh out of jail and setting up a new operation in secret. He has to spend a lot of money to equip his new effort. First, he must sell himself as credible to his scammer crew. He flies them to a purported goldmine and equips his boiler room with lots of expensive computer equipment. Then he passes out rolls of cash to the successful scammers. That he can front such an expensive operation fresh out of prison seems incredible.Then there is Julia Ormond's character 'Caitlin Carlson', 'Kelly Grant's' mistress and business partner. What was she up to while her man was in prison? She claims to be seeking a green card to stay in the USA, was she cooling her heels in Britain during 'Kelly Grant's' prison sentence? 'Caitlin' hooks up with 'Penny', initially one of the least successful scammers. She was such a mercenary character, that should have set off alarm bells in 'Penny's' brain.The ending left me confused. 'Caitlin' has drained 'Penny's' bank account and skipped out. The boiler room has been cleaned out overnight and 'Kelly Grant' is nowhere around to pay his scammers their commissions on investments in the worthless gold mine. Did 'Caitlin' and 'Kelly' leave together or did 'Caitlin' take the money and move on free of 'Kelly'?'Kelly Grant' had to realize that word of his betrayal of his scammer employees would leak out. No one would ever work for him again. He could only hope to get enough money from this operation to afford to retire permanently from scamming. This film never addressed what happened in this regard.Real life is full of unanswered questions. So is this film. Perhaps, we are not seeking too much reality in our entertainment. Still, looking at the bleak personal lives of these characters, I feel grateful that I lead a normal life, the kind of people these scammers attempt to prey upon. In the end, all their schemes leave the scammers worse off than their victims.

design-5 Vince Vaughn makes a convincing "trapped looser" and the frustration emanates off the screen. The love scenes made the ending that much more vital and Julia Ormand is convincingly and sexily enthralling. Had to watch them twice.I saw this on DVD, did not hear of it in distribution and it may have been appropriately sent direct to video by the studio. It's not a BIG picture, but the characters are entertaining (Wallace Shawn, Stephen Tobolowsky, George Wendt, Rory Cochrane, et. al.). Ed Harris, as always, is very good.The coverage in some of the scenes was inadequate to provide enough editing material for smooth scene movement (bedroom scenes). Nice camera work from veteran John Alonzo.The ending left me hanging, but it still seemed like the only finish for this story that made sense.

whpratt1 Vince Vaughn,(Pendelton(Penny)Wise), "The Break Up",'06, plays the role of a guy who is a super salesman on the telephone,(Tel-Marketer) who is working in a flea bag of a business with all kinds of weird gals and guys and then all of a sudden he meets up with Julia Ormond,(Caitlin Carlson, "Resistance",'03. Caitlin works for another outfit called Kelly Grant and offers Penny an opportunity to work for her company. The boss of Kelly Grant is Ed Harris,(Kelly Grant),"Dirt Nap",'05, gives Penny an interview and decides to hire him. There is a burned out relationship between Caitlin and Kelly, however, Caitliin and Penny begin to set the bed sheets a fire and are constantly in heat. Great film, with a very surprising ending and a film very worth viewing.