The New Age

I liked this film because it does a good job of making the viewer consider what is important in life, and why. On the other hand, it is not the most exciting movie ever made. I recommend this if you want a story to ponder that exposes modern values to criticism. I give it a 7/10.

Peter and Katherine are a typical couple of California yuppies. They want to be cool, the want to indulge themselves, they live lavishly on their credit cards, and they hold "spiritual values" above wealth and work. Unfortunately, when their careers go down the toilet during the recession in the early 1990s, they fall upon hard times. They try to start an independent business, but their easy and hedonistic lifestyle prevents them from putting in the blood, sweat, and tears that are required for success in retail. Their spiritual values are of no help when things get rough, because their "New Age" values are really just a justification for selfishness and egocentricity.

The movie is the story of their loss of innocence. To get their lives back on track, they have to work hard at jobs that simply are not cool. Their elitist attitudes must give way to sacrifice and common sense. It is not clear whether this is a triumph or a tragedy for Peter and Katherine. That is left up to the viewer in this one.

This film was a complete surprise to me. It's clever, funny and very thought-provoking. Judy Davis and Peter Weller (that man is underrated) both deliver excellent performances. A warning: The ending isn't quite the usual happy salvation, but it really does hit the perfect note on one of the main themes of the film: You can't always get what you want. And pushing that very feeling to the viewer just before the credits is perhaps the cleverest thing about the whole film.

The previous reviewer's comments mysteriously do not allude to the terrific humor of this film. It is a clever, understated, totally deadpan comedy. If you like black, dry humor, this film is for you. At the same time it skewers the vapidly self-affirming culture of the wealthy, new age set. Slowly, Peter Weller and Judy Davis's characters' natures are purified in the furnace of self-destruction, until they discover their true selves -- mediocrity and greed, which lately pretended to be new age spirituality. A succession of fatuous gurus pushes them down the slope of destruction, until finally Samuel Jackson, in a fabulous cameo, teaches Peter Weller how to attain ultimate truth through techniques of visualization. By this point, the Davis-Weller characters have lost their jobs, their wealth, their "friends", their home, their failed business, and their relationship (did I mention the affairs?), and, perhaps, all illusions that there was anything at their core.

With the exception of one or two scenes, everything in this film is deliciously subtle and understated, but all the more wickedly funny for it. You might not realize how good it is at first. A second viewing will really help your appreciation of it.

If this film doesn't make you laugh, grasshopper, then perhaps you still do not know yourself.

Yuppie couple. Falls on hard times. After too many good times. Lose jobs. Have affairs. Have crisis of identity. Then set up in business.

That's a rough sketch of what happens, and it's quite watchable. Judy Davis looks incredibly young and sexy. So does Peter Weller. And it's written by Olly Stone too...What more do people want?

I Never 'New' It Was This Good!!!

"The New Age" is half fascinating and half dull. It's very much a comedy, albeit a very dark and satirical one. But it's emotionally distant, and has the distinct sense of being a film about rich people made for and by other rich people. It's about a world with a built-in sense of the ridiculous in the everyday, so much so that it's hard to know what's meant to make us laugh and what's designed to reflect real life. The leads are good. Peter Weller and Judy Davis disappear into their characters, Davis to the point I really didn't recognize her. The best and most entertaining part of the film is Samuel L. Jackson's cameo, and the scenes directly relating to it.

Michael Tolkin's script has a lot of depth, but his direction doesn't. He films what happens, but without any real understanding of how to stage it. "The New Age" is a visually flat film, and looks like just about every average film from 1994. Which is to say, pretty dull. But, in the end, the script lifts the film up enough to be interesting in passing. I don't regret having seen this.