It is a performances centric movie

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

I'm very surprised that it's described as a "drama" in the ... place from which I downloaded it (I forget whether we're allowed to mention these places by name - the red envelope place, please). Anyway, it's definitely more a comedy/satire than a drama and as such it's rather heavy handed and obvious. Still it's somewhat amusing. Whether you liked it or not, if you even got through it I would recommend you check out, for something similar but much much better all around, Alan Rudolph's "Choose Me" which is actually one of my favorite movies both for its style and substance.Oh, and I will say some of the editing choices in this film really left me scratching my head and wondering whether they were desperate attempts to gloss over little accidents of some sort in the shooting or just kind of bad editing/montagerie.The acting was good in general Rachel Rosenthal was almost too real! Brava!

"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.

"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.

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.