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.

It's no mistake that the main character's name is "Penny Wise" because in the end he turns out to be "pound foolish".Here is a man who is a professional telemarketer (I suppose there are those things) who is wise in the ways of the game. He knows how to work a call and what to say to close the deal, which feeds his competitive spirit.But he's not as smart as he thinks he is, because he gets hooked by the wrong people, who are charismatic and charming and convincing, believing their story about a mine that will make them all rich, if only they can get to the riches. He is skeptical at first, but eventually decides it's all legit and signs on. Not only does he eventually get scammed the way he has been scamming the people he phones, but he falls for one of the scammers -- the oldest trick in the book -- men are so easy -- and gets hurt, not only in the wallet, but in his heart.Penny Wise is someone we want to dislike because of his job, but he is shown taking care of his alcoholic, homeless friend, so in spite of his greed and manipulative ways we're supposed to say, "Aww, he must have a heart of gold because he's nice to the crippled guy," but it didn't work for me. A scam-artist is still a scam-artist as far as I'm concerned, so I really didn't have much compassion for him and was glad he finally knew what it felt like to be on the other end of the scam.As far as his telemarketing "skills" went, if he spoke to me the way he spoke to cold-call clients I don't think I'd be having a very long conversation with him. He cussed a blue streak at them, insulted them, and berated them when they hesitated, and they still gave him their trust and money. I found this to be rather contradictory and completely unrealistic.The ending is just plain stupid, because no bank in the world will let just anyone walk in and withdraw money from somebody else's account, whether the balance is eighty thousand dollars or eight bucks, on the strength of only a letter and a marriage certificate.But even though the ending was stupid and the characters were unlikeable because of what they did for a living, I thought the movie as a whole was good. It was nice to see Vince Vaughn in a calmer and more dramatic role than he usually takes, and Ed Harris was perfect as the prime gig mastermind. Julia Ormond was the exception, though, in that she seemed too wishy-washy and didn't come off as strong or as devious as her character should have been.

Vince Vaughn's character is named Pendleton "Penny" Wise.A reference to Stephen King's It? Is our hero an evil, heartless predator like the others? Maybe it's a just a play on words. If so, you'd think he'd be smarter with his money. I suppose it could just be irony.Regardless, I found the movie very predictable and am surprised at how gullible some of the characters in the film actually are. However, the ending is very realistic. Perhaps most people will frown upon the lack of closure, but it's not like other movies haven't ended this way.Anyway, I didn't know if anyone else had notice the similarity in the character names. There was no mention of it in the trivia section for the movie.

This is a great movie with a great cast however Vince Vaughn gives perhaps his best dramatic performance to date. Unlike Will Ferrel, Vaughn can do both comedy and drama. This is a great movie thats shows us the real sleazy and corrupt world of telemarketing. In fact if your a telemarketer watching this film , youll probably be mad since it exposed your corrupt jobs!! lolVaughn plays Penny Wise, a small but great telemarketer who knows how to con people into making sales for his cheap company.Eventually a bigger telemarketing scheme headed by the character of Ed Harris wants to use Penny's "skills" in this area to pull of a Million Dollar scam.Meanwhile Penny's friend is out of work and relies on him for support.Penny is caught in a corner, work with this rich white scoundrels to steal millions and sell his soul to the devil , so to speak, or do the right thing?This a great movie about moral dilemna and what you really do if you really had to put your money where your mouth and live up to your own idealogies.All the performances are great and the movie, doesn't really tell you what Penny's "final decision" will be until the 10 minutes he "goes along" with the scam and looks like he will do it with the rest of them.Highly recommended.