Critic Reviews

Tolkin gives us one richly detailed set piece after another, involving luncheons, openings, massages, telephone tag, psychic consultations, sex, heartfelt conversation, and pagan rituals led by a bald-headed woman who sees what others cannot see.

Michael Tolkin's THE NEW AGE is something new, a comedy of horrors that's brittle, hypnotically hip, and so cool it almost freezes the audience out.

A dark, ambitious, unsettling piece of work.

A sometimes smart social commentary on Los Angeles characters who seek spiritual salvation when they can't buy every object they want. Judy Davis and Peter Weller play a trendy couple who look like they are from the outtakes of "Short Cuts" and "The Player."

A brave stab, nevertheless, with a finely executed finale as Peter sets about his ironic salvation.

What sustains The New Age through these falterings are its edgy stars, its lively unpredictability, and the essential seriousness of Mr. Tolkin's thoughts. Even when working in an atypically upbeat mode, in a film that never dares follow its dark prophecy to the bitter end, he sustains a disturbing frankness. [16 Sept 1994, p.C5]

Tolkin's characters are annoying, yet there is something appealing in their misguided and consumer-driven search for the higher meaning. Tolkin's script may not measure up to the fast-paced verbal sparring of The Player but Judy Davis' performance is, as always, mesmerizing and hilarious.

Although it's fascinating, intelligent and scathingly accurate in its depiction of a certain milieu, The New Age is a more problematic picture than 1991's The Rapture - where Mimi Rogers played a sexually adventurous woman who finds spiritual succor in fundamentalist Christianity. [23 Sept 1994, p.03]

The movie ends up playing like a series of skits and one-liners, some of them pointed and funny, that strain to achieve structure, substance and a workable ending. Fortunately, Judy Davis and Peter Weller are Tolkin's stars, and they're capable of providing a center for almost anything. [23 Sept 1994, p.H3]

At one point in The New Age, the terminally stylish post-yuppie couple played by Peter Weller and Judy Davis put on their fanciest threads in order to commit double suicide, but can't go through with it. Like them, Michael Tolkin's film gets all dressed up but doesn't quite know where to go.