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good back-story, and good acting

Good , But It Is Overrated By Some

Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

The response to this film was a little more negative than I expected. I liked the film better than Tolkin's "The Rapture." It's one of my favorites to watch for non-serious viewing.The film has a quirkiness, even a spookiness, that, apparently, many dislike and don't understand. I wanted to recount the plot; however, since that's not desired, I don't see why other reviewers think the plot is so implausible.Peter Weller's and Judy Davis' characters seem to be mismatched partners, but is that so implausible? This dissonance was probably intended, but disliked by many viewers. Anyway, the main characters compromise themselves in many ways: I think Peter and Judy do well in the movie.I also like Adam West in his small part, and the under-rated Patrick Bachau plays his part as a new-age guru with urbane spookiness. Corbin Bernsen has a small part at the beginning as the boss for Peter Weller's character (Weller's character is conveniently named "Peter.")Finally, I like the depictions of certain new-age ceremonies and personalities--this is rare in movies.... I think the movie is thoughtful. It does not have much action, but don't most action films today flagrantly violate the law of "suspension of disbelief?"This film will not be liked by the multitude in America with the attention span of a gnat.

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 deep satire which runs the gamut of things 90's. Using a Davis and Weller, a 40ish L.A. married couple, as a centerpiece, the film attempts to depict the emptiness of the hedonistic, materialistic, and morally bankrupt life style of the "new age" as it follows the principals from schmoozfests to open marriages to euthanasia to spiritual healing to spas and massages to orgies, etc, all the while portraying the characters as subtle exaggerations which are likely to go over with most audiences like a lead balloon. This unfortunate product by Tolkin starts like serious drama and slowly drifts in limbo somewhere between satire and realism so as to leave many wondering why the film was made and why they bothered to watch it.

Critics seem to have split widely on this film, and it's easy to see why. It's a rather painful, plodding thing to sit through--yet one can't get it out of the mind afterward. Writer/director Tolkin has a lot of disturbing things to say about post-industrial affluence in America in the 1990s, and in trying to say everything in one movie he has piled it on so thick that the brain requires a postmortem to reflect. Judy Davis, as she was in "Husbands and Wives," is dynamite, and the film is worth seeing just for her. The film has an uncanny eye and feel for the bleak interiors of the contemporary American service economy: the boutiques, the high-rise telemarketing boiler rooms, the house-poor interiors of career people who are hardly ever at home, etc. The film's title refers to the spiritual quest of the couple to find a meaning to their existence, or at least some alternative approach to life to their destructive materialism. How they go about it is all wrong, of course. In true hedonist fashion, they try everything. At the same time they seek a simpler, spiritual, non-materialistic life via a bunch of wacky gurus and cultists, they are indulging in carnal and other pleasures as diversions. When they open a small business, ostensibly to gain more control over their lives and income, the forces of the world are worse than any bosses. In all of this, they seem to be outside of everything they do, as in dreams when you watch yourself and are powerless to control the changing scenery. Despite their doldrums and hostility, this is a couple who have too much in common to split. During the course of all this, Tolkin gets plenty of jabs in about an American economy that seems to be teetering on wisps of hope rather than on any true productivity. By the end, the "new age" looks uncomfortably like a very old one, in which the law of the jungle reigned.