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New Best Friend |  | Director: Zoe Clarke-Williams
Actors: Mia Kirshner, Meredith Monroe, Dominique Swain, Scott Bairstow, Rachel True
Studio: Sony Pictures
Category: DVD
List Price: $19.94
Buy New: $2.24
as of 11/21/2009 16:36 CST details
You Save: $17.70 (89%)
New (18) Used (21) from $2.24
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Rating:  16 reviews
Format: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, Full Screen, Widescreen, NTSC
Languages: English (Subtitled), French (Subtitled), English (Original Language)
Rating: R (Restricted)
Region: 99
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
Number Of Discs: 1
Running Time: 90 Minutes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.5 x 5.3 x 0.6
ISBN: 0767890639
UPC: 043396087132
EAN: 9780767890632
Theatrical Release Date: April 12, 2002
Release Date: July 16, 2002
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com
A breath of fresh air in a stale genre, Zoe Clarke-Williams's canny look at the catty world of college cliques is the smartest dissection of the complex world of class envy, social acceptance, and the seduction of privilege since Heathers. But this drama plays it for tragedy. Local working-class girl Mia Kirshner is transformed from social outcast to campus Cinderella and adopted into the hedonistic party world of a trio of rich fun-loving sorority princesses (Meredith Monroe, Dominique Swain, and Rachel True), and comes out the other end in a drug-induced coma. Confidently directed and elegantly constructed in puzzle-piece flashbacks, this sensitive, sympathetic, smartly made drama is refreshingly free of glib moralizing, the rare young-adult film that twists the usual clichés and leaves its audience with more questions than answers. The DVD also features an audio commentary track by director Zoe Clarke-Williams. --Sean Axmaker
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 16
 New Best Friend DVD November 20, 2009
Elizabeth LaTrace
I am in love with this indie film starring two of my favorite actresses, Mia Kirschner and Dominique Swain! A nerd gets a taste of what it's like to be popular and goes down a winding path of destruction. This movie is very well done and I recommend it for anyone!
 Slick, subtle, and worth a look see August 3, 2006
Steve Stubbs (Texas (USA))
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
This is a movie I did not fully appreciate until after it was over and I wanted to watch it again. The premise is, poor girl Alicia goes to a rich person's school where everyone except her is amoral, meaning in plain English they like sex and drugs. But wait a minute. Who is really into sex and drugs in this movie? Who is really envious of whom? Alicia, who is supposed to be the moral poor girl, ends up in hospital due to a drug overdose. Is Hadley, who is far wealthier than Alicia, really envious of her and not the other way around? Why do we feel such intense sympathy for the comatose Alicia? And why is some of the music, especially the music that plays at the end while the credits are running, so haunting?
This film plays with your mind as you watch it and does not get caught in the process. Great acting doesn't hurt, either.
This movie critic says, check it out.
 If You Want to See Soccer Moms Playing Undergraduates October 3, 2005
Only-A-Child
10 out of 13 found this review helpful
"New Best Friend" is another entry in the "steal another woman's life" sub-genre; the best of which are "Single White Female" and "The Hand That Rocks the Cradle"; the worse of which you can catch almost any afternoon on the Lifetime Channel. For some reason this type of identity theft happens exclusively to women.
There are just two basic ways to play this type of story. You can make the woman evil at the beginning and let the audience watch knowingly as she hatches and implements her evil scheme. Or you use misdirection to make her appear a good person, as a seemingly unplanned series of events break in her favor until she is revealed to be evil in the climatic scene. Unfortunately the makers of "New Best Friend" could not decide how they wanted to play it and things crash and burn early. We first meet Alicia (Mia Kirshner) scamming the college's financial aid office for scholarship money. We now know that she is a bad person and will view all her subsequent activity with suspicion. But the director and editor apparently forgot that this revelation had been made and spend the next 50 minutes laying misdirection to make us think that Alicia is a good person. This introduces the only element of suspense, not about whether she is evil but about when the director and editor will wise up and stop wasting our time with transparent misdirection.
"New Best Friend" suffers more than most from the teen movie curse of a cast too old to be portraying undergraduate students. There are really only two big parts, Hadley (Meredith Monroe) and Alicia (Kirshner). They were 31 and 26 respectively at the time of the production. It almost works for the 26 year-old Kirshner when she plays the mousy version of Alicia but it becomes glaring when she is transformed into the glamed-up version of Alicia. Monroe's casting is simply a joke, about like having Nicholette Sheridan try to pass as a classmate on "Lizzie McGwire". She looks much closer to a mid-life crisis than to a term paper.
The producers must have owed a lot of favors because this age issue extends to most of the supporting characters. Taye Diggs who plays the town sheriff is younger than most of the students.
The basic setup is that Hadley and two other rich party girls (played by Dominque Swain-age 21 and Rachel True-age 35) are undergrad roommates at college. They share (as their student residence) a mansion that is nicer and better furnished than the mansion on Real World-New Orleans (a premise more believable than soccer moms playing students). Alicia moves into the mansion and begins to take over Hadley's life. At least that way Swain finally gets a roommate from her own generation so the two can have a lesbian scene. Swain's supporting performance is the only good thing about "New Best Friend" and her love scene with Kirshner is fantastic, so cool and artsy that it doesn't fit with any of the other segments, maybe it was subcontracted out to a good director and cinematographer.
The unintentionally hilarious story is presented in a series of dreary flashbacks of rampant sex and nonstop parties, each proceeded by a shot of a comatose Alicia in a hospital bed. About half of Kirshner's screen time is spent lying motionless with a tube in her mouth. Not a good career move Mia.
Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child.
Cut Them Some Slack - New Best Friend Rocks! March 1, 2005
Pinky the brain (Christchurch, New Zealand)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
As both a big fan of this movie and a film student, I feel that critics have been quick to judge this film as bad trash. This film has a sexy edge to it, that many other films in the "teen film" genre dare to exhibit. New Best Friend fullfills a fantasy for those girls who secretly desire to live dangerously and party every night, without it actually becoming a reality. The house is every girl's dream, and these girls are alluring and suavely tempting. The acting is far from terrible, and it was great to see Meredith Monroe in a more sophisticated and darker role than her role as Andie in Dawson's Creek. Dominique Swain once again puts in an A+ effort for her role as the cheeky deviant Sydney. For anyone who loved films like Tart and Cruel intentions,this is the film for you.
Taye Diggs Owns March 22, 2004
Jonathan (Ocala, Florida)
3 out of 5 found this review helpful
New Best Friend is one of those films that grabs your attention and maintains your suspicion all the way through until the incredible ending. The screenwriting is nothing short of miraculous and Taye Diggs' ability to capture the role of the school detective is truly awe-inspiring. Why Diggs' wasn't up for an Oscar is beyond me and others of his extensive fanbase. If you want an example of acting at it's finest, tune into the scene featuring the drug dealer and witness the intesity Diggs' displays. While the rest of the acting is rather lackluster, Diggs' performance pinpoints him as the obvious catalyst of this marvel of the modern film making industry.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 16
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