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.

musicbman Having worked in telemarketing - did some night work at a room very similar to the place at the start of this movie - I feel this film does an perfect job of capturing that atmosphere - it was spot on, the pitches, the types of characters that work in these type rooms to a tee. It captured they types of people - like the Indian guy - had all the right things to say on the wall - he spent so much time putting it up, he probably didn't make many calls - or had call reluctance, the lifers like Gene, etc., the desperation, the call reluctance - that Penny had when not selling for Kelly Gran. Some things I didn't like was where Penny, while working for Kelly Grant and breaks out of his call reluctance, he yells "Chang, go get your FxxxN checkbook and write me an Fxxxn Check NOW!" - I wish they would have been a bit more accurate - no one buys if you try to bully them that way - never works - but if Penny would have been firm but suave, that would have been better. Also, the ending left something to be desired - but overall, this is the absolute best, most accurate depiction of telemarketing out there, very entertaining, good acting. I wish there was a prime gig 2! Anyone out there that knows of any other movie that even comes close (yes, I've seen Boiler Room, Glengarry, Wall Street, Tin Men, Bonfire of the Vanities) - is there one out there? LOVE THIS MOVIE>

dy158 Telemarketeers...just the sound of it makes some of us cringe because not everyone likes those telemarketers to 'harass' us over the phone over something they want to promote on.And when moral questions are being raised about what is right and wrong, it has become a grey area. This is where Penny Wise (Vince Vaughn) has to deal with his own conscience.Scamming people through the phone is what Penny is good at for his job as a telemarketer, and when he was being hired to be part of this million-dollar scam, he was rather being hesitant at first. It's where his conscience starts to collide.Very interesting and quirky look at telemarketers who scam for the sake of money. Vince Vaughn portrayed it that well.Guess I will never see those telemarketers the same way again.

Brian McRee 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.