Palo Alto

The ennui here is strong. Real strong. The Coppola flavor strong. Yet, while clearly influenced by her bigger sister, Gia manages to make her own movie, distinct because of her frequent use of meandering pillow shots and her eager willingness to get a little dark and dirty. A couple of weak characters and cringe-worthy conversations really hurt the movie, but overall it feels honest. Emma Roberts has skills, and James Franco, to no one's surprise, convincingly plays a rapey high school coach.

2nd viewing: I was wrong. This is crap. It mistakes darkness for intellect. And so did I.

(2nd viewing) Directed by the latest member from the Coppola dynasty, Gia's intimate portrait of a bored and disaffected youth sets itself apart from other coming-of-age tales through both its warm and often unusual style. While Durald's evocative camera work beautifully captures the characters' meandering aimlessness with subtlety and growing intimacy, Gia manages to elicit more than decent performances from its mostly teenage cast. It'll be interesting to see where she goes from here.

http://www.clickhole.com/article/i-actually-kind-give-shit-teen-reveals-his-darkest-1480

It took me around 40 minutes to get out of 'oh this is just a merry bunch of teenagers who exist on Tumblr', then it got good. It's kind of like a modern Rumble Fish, isn't it? The Coppola Family clan is working like spring rabbits.

I fucking hate stupid teenagers: the movie

(FRANCO TIMES AT RI-GIA-MONT HIGH.)

worth a watch

It's well done in a contemporary aesthetic that the other Coppola girl helped to foster, but I've really had it with these lethargic teenage wastelands.

1

This is an impressive directorial debut from Gia Coppola. It reminded me of Spring Breakers, as well as films by her aunt, Sofia Coppola. I really liked some of the dialogue, but a lot of didn't really work. I do really like these stories about meaninglessness & nihilism & people doing bad things & destroying things for no real reason. I don't think it's a movie I'll be remembering a long time from now, but I liked it. Coppola's direction was really good, and I hope we'll see more fr

Palo Alto is a decent film about how awful teenagers can be when fueled with rage, angst, emotion, and boredom. Like so many other films before it, it makes its point perfectly fine. It's suitably aimless and unpleasant. It has good acting. It is not for everyone or even most people. It will bore or repulse the average Joe and Jane who just know their kids will never interact with anyone like what's portrayed here, because this film is just soooo unrealistic.

It doesn't offer anything particularly new to a well worn genre, but a fun addition to the canon nonetheless. Performances are good, and there's enough of a unique voice behind it all to warrant looking forward to Gia Coppola's career.

Palo Alto is a stark look at adolescent life and all of the decisions that are made every day. Jack Kilmer and Emma Roberts are the focus of this film. The two seemingly star-crossed lovers meet at one point and life intercedes enough to push them back apart. That time apart though ends up making them better able to understand one another and they come back together in the end. Palo Alto does a good job of conveying those feelings of waiting that every adolescent person feels.

An engaging debut from Coppola and a pretty great performance from Roberts.

Not to sure why I got this but James Franco and Emma Roberts were both good. And Adrian Balboa was in this movie.

Palo Alto sustains a sense of low-key authenticity and it's never less than watchable but it just doesn't coalesce dramatically or thematically. The young cast do decent work with underwritten characters.

It's a bit stupid and it's clear Coppola and Franco have never been around real teenagers before, but shows promise.

This movie was beyond the Palo, I mean pale. Some of the scenes worked, you can tell that James Franco used his extensive knowledge of pot smoking in his writing. He also seems to have this gross attraction to nubile high school-age girls. This was based off some short stories written by Franco and you could tell because it felt so disjointed, you could tell it was a collection of stories instead of just one fluid one...

An inoffensive collection of vignettes of Californian teenagers and the messed-up shenanigans (fictional) teenagers can get up to. Reasonably interesting characters, decent acting, a mature directorial style, remaining quite sombre without ever turning colourful or gripping à la Reality Bites or Superbad. No real heroes or villains, more of a realist tone (not that my real life ever resembled this). Easy to watch but ultimately easy to forget, I fear.

Emma Roberts ina coming of age drama? Didn't see that coming.... Nothing at all new here. Watched about an hour before realising, I really couldn't give a shit what was happening to these people.

Lol the balls on Franco to make a movie about him fucking a teenager

Palo Alto is an frustrating look at a bunch of indulged kids who choose act like trashy delinquents despite no genuine reason to do so. Coppola's direction is decent with the synth-esque soundtrack creating a distinct mood throughout, though she overindulges at times with close-ups and artsy cuts. Ultimately the film is mediocre employing too many clichés and just uninteresting.

Does a good job capturing he detachment and hedonism of a generation, but then gets ultra boring, repetitive and preachy in the second half.

A series of overlapping stories of disaffected youth. More of a mood piece than driven by narrative, but effectively captures the teenage experience.

Was hoping for more, but maybe I'm just a little bored of existential teens. However, it depicts a very appropriate kind of teenage philosophy. The characters are confused, depressed, for the first time they're seeing life as a bit of a meaningless thing. But it's full of so much malaise. It's weird that if I made a film in high school it probably would've been the exact same thing as this, but I'm kind of past this stuff now.

Gia Coppola seems to have learned a few things about matching dreamy visuals with a cool soundtrack from her aunt, and James Franco seems to have learned how to write amusingly oddball dialogue from Harmony Korine. This film is pretty much the halfway point between these sensibilities and it mostly works really well. Their inexperience sometimes shows in certain scenes that are sort of thematically unsubtle in certain ways, and the characters are somewhat archetypical, but overall it's fine.

It seems like the Coppola family has a genetic proclivity to be masters of creating gorgeous, moving atmospheres that often speak volumes more than the characters or the scripts themselves. This film has some really solid performances and meanders around from character to character like a soft, melancholy dream. Ultimately I enjoyed this, but the film often lacks direction and has some poorly executed areas of dialogue within scenes. A deceivingly dark portrait of bored and wandering youth.

Palo Alto is a fine example of coming of age story with a balanced story telling, characters and visualization.

No atmosphere,shallow and altogether annoying characters,lack of storyline,pretentious while not touching anything substantial.I don't get the reason why this movie has been shot at all.I love a movie of teens pointlessly meandering as much as the next guy,but only if there's at least some connection with a couple,or even one,of the characters.This was completely absent for me in this picture, which could at least left some sort of story or development to appreciate,but that,too,was missing.

Could be dismissed as bored rich teenagers doing bored rich teenage stuff, but that's partly because Coppola refuses to do the big dramatic showdowns and reveals, or at least to treat them as such rather than just moments that only look huge in afterthought. The script has its weak points, and no American should ever be allowed to pretend they know the first thing about football, but Coppola's eye for detail and character and strong performances work wonders.

Closer to Paranoid Park than The Bling Ring. Yes, James Franco is still the worst and his presence here is totall) grating but it sounds like Harmony Korine may have left an impression on him. Maybe the non-sequiturs try a little too hard, but they're charming enough plus the dreamy visuals are the real reason to come here. Imagine the opening of Millennium Mambo but it's populated with a bunch of west coast brats. Wish I had gone to parties in high school that played Blood Orange....

This movie was all over the place. On the one hand seeing multiple characters all experience young adulthood and develop them a bit was interesting. On the other the film was not long enough to be meaningful and used more and more exaggerated situations to make what felt like no conclusive point.

There are dragging moments, and the subject material has been done to death, but the performances are organic and the writing authentic.