Customer Reviews

The New Age [VHS]

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Ten years after its release, Steve Martin's LA Story has a cult following for its adept interpretation of vapid and decadent Los Angelinos. Though LA Story came out in 1990 and seems to lampoon the 80s, Michael Tolkin goes way beyond his collaborative work with Robert Altman(The Player) with this pitch black comedy.

The film is way ahead of its time. Hollywood has yet to examine the decadent 90s in any way. Here we have characters who are more Clinton era than American Beauty. Pretty astute, considering that the film was released in 1994!

Look for top performances from Peter Weller, Judy Davis, and great supporting work from Adam West, Sandra Seacat, and a pre-Pulp Fiction Samuel Jackson. Hopefully, some of the great camera work an slick visuals will find its way on to DVD in the near future.

Michael Tolkin's "The New Age" was the most scathing movie indictment of the American dream gone Sonoma catalog since Albert Brooks' brilliant satire "Lost In America". "The New Age" re-teams the "Tracy & Hepburn" of indie film, Peter Weller and Judy Davis, who were also the wacked-out couple in "Naked Lunch". Instead of heading off in an RV to go "find themselves", Judy and Peter decide to "simplify" thier over-extended Yuppie lifestyle by chucking it all and opening up a Beverly Hills boutique. Hilarity ensues....right? Actually, the movie takes a more low-key,sometimes cruel, black comedy approach to its subjects as they proceed to go into a tandem midlife crisis. Along the way, most trendy southern California fads are lampooned, recalling the film "Serial", which savaged the Bay Area Yuppie/New Age scene in the same fashion. Good supporting performances abound; the biggest surprise is Adam "Batman" West, who is priceless as Weller's father. West plays the wryly acerbic, aging Lothario with much aplomb.(Where has he been?!) Highly recommended.

This is still one of the sharpest dark comedies around about LA, specifically, and failed yuppie dreams , generally, that I have ever seen. Makes such Steve Martin attempts, like LA Story, seem lame. Infinitely quotable lines: "Money isn't money! Money is an expression of something else!" Peter Weller and Judy Davis are pitch perfect. The NEW AGE trappings that abound in the movie are not just scatter shot- there is a flirtation with BDSM, there is alternative medicine, and assisted suicide; there is applied and misapplied Taoist and Buddhist philosophy and there is real satire on the Consumerist Culture. Plus there is Patricia Heaton well before Everybody Loves Raymond, and the enigmatic Patrick Bachau being ...umm...enigmatic, and Adam West as Peter's kind of slimy, slippery, and distant Dad. So good here!

For a kind of similar experience, see Albert Brooks' "Lost in America."
Then re-think "American Beauty."

THIS FILM is NOT a MESS, and I'd be thankful if folks who "review" in that vein would at least back up their opinions with some discussion about the film itself, beyond one sentence.

Please, powers that own the rights to this film! Release the DVD! Because every old VHS I've scrounged up plays like they were baking in the bargain bin sun at the dollar store's front window.

Yes, I concur that this movie needs to be released on DVD. I guess it's probably too sprawling and ambitious and weird for mass tastes, and its tone is sort of uncertain - one doesn't always know whether it's supposed to be a parody, a drama, or what. But this doesn't get across how consistently fun it is, and how many, yes, great performances there are. Judy Davis is fabulous as always, and Peter Weller is wonderfully sleazy and smarmy and vacuous. (What happened to him, anyway?) I have seen it three times now and I am desperate to see it again, especially as I now live in Paris and sometimes just need a good dose of L.A. The movie is also, not incidentally, just gorgeous to look at. (And this may have something to do with the uncertainty of tone - no matter how ridiculously these characters are behaving, they and their surroundings are always beautifully, lusciously photographed.) Oh, and whoever that actress is who plays the snooty friend of Judy Davis - she's great. So, yes - DVD!! Let us raise the cry.
As a side note, The Player is probably a tighter, more coherent sort of movie than The New Age, but I much prefer The New Age, flaws and all.

The economy is destroyed when banks make loans to bad-risk borrowers. Those who have never been poor suddenly are and must cope with an altered reality. All of this sounds familiar, except that the movie was released in 1994. The protagonists, played by Peter Weller and Judy Davis, open up a boutique clothing store which promptly goes belly-up and its failure forces them to seek new 'opportunities'. Part comedy, part drama, part satire of L.A. materialism, narcissism, and trendoid culture, the parts never come together to form a seamless whole and the result is something of a genre mish-mash. There are clever scenes, memorable lines, good performances and some spot-on satire, but the film is not as strong as the script and the result is a cinematic misfire. Watch for interesting supporting parts played by Samuel L. Jackson, Adam West, John Diehl, Patricia Heaton, et al.

This movie meant a lot more to me after I lived in Phoenix, Arizona for a year, which is as far west as I want to go for the rest of my life. It's much more interesting to observe empty, soul-less people from a safe distance. It's funny. See "The Rapture," too. Thanks.

Well, I bought this tape, because I have not been able to find it on DVD. I hope it will be published soon. However, now I do not have a VHS player and I don't want one. I am looking for someone to convert this to DVD for me. But this was a facinating, dark, moody movie and I think a great deal of it.

This film is a mess. It features a load of stars and made no sense at all. The great Icelandic actress Maria Ellingsen appears once or twice and is her exceptional skills are wasted in this mess. I wouldn't recommend this to anyone.