Moviefreak Really, there is nothing about this movie except seeing some teenage lives. They are told in a superficial way, not in a deep & elaborative way. I like the movie with its music and scenes, and I like the time watching it. However, I am not satisfied with how the so-called plot developed. Events come to a point, but they do not meet in a common point, so the plot is scattered. What I can say about that is lazy writing.If you want to fill your time up or need a movie that does not require paying attention to the plot or following the story, watch this. If you want to see a teenage movie, there are much better ones like 10 Things I Hate About You, Thirteen, etc etc.

SquigglyCrunch Palo Alto follows two teenagers specifically as they live their lives at the end of their high school years, as they and their friends develop relationships and attempt to balance their stress with everything else. Gia Coppola does a great job with the directing here. There were several scenes that proved pretty to look at or just plain flattering for the actors or sets. It was nice to see someone putting effort into the movie. As far as acting goes, Emma Roberts shows herself to be a talented actress that simply hasn't found the role to make her one of the greats. There's an Oscar winner in there somewhere, she just hasn't found her yet. Jack Kilmer most notably pulls off a solid performance as the other leading teenager. He pulls off the whole stoner persona really well, while still bringing depth to his character. And James Franco also manages to pull off a note-worthy performance here as a high school soccer coach. He's genuine, no matter what the material is that he's given. As for the rest of the acting, it ranges from bad to okay. The main child actor is pretty terrible. Every line he's given is just an atrocious read and it's so blatant that this kid has no idea what he's doing, nor any concept of how to act. I know he's a kid, and thankfully his role was small, but I don't really care. He sucked. There was also this voice over of a judge reading something to one of the characters and he's just monotone for the entire thing. Nobody talks like that. It's like he was literally reading off the script. Nat Wolff was kind of off and on here. Sometimes he was pretty good, and other times he wasn't so much. Some of the writing was good. It resonated with me and I was able to relate to some of the feelings of the characters. But a lot of the time it was way out there. Coppola didn't seem to know how to make these characters hook up romantically, because a lot of the time they just start making out and hope for the best. And it works a lot of the time. Like apparently there's no such thing as relationship made organically, people just mack and pray. Some of the characters are kind of dumb sometimes. They jump to conclusions and overreact. Furthermore, the movie attempts to cram as much relatable high school junk in as possible, and as a result none of it receives nearly as much development as it should. There's the whole soccer thing, then there's graduation and relationships and partying and volunteering (no working apparently) and as a result multiple of these things take a backseat to each other. And while some of them did receive plenty of attention, many didn't. Also there's this metaphor for life that gets briefly mentioned at some point in the movie and then gets brought up again at the end as if it's a huge deal and has huge significance to the entire movie and all that, when in actuality the metaphor is poorly presented and doesn't make a whole lot of sense with the rest of the movie. It's pretty pretentious. And the pacing is just flat out bad. When the movie seemed to be wrapping up it'd only hit halfway, and from then on I was losing interest with every minute. And it doesn't help that the movie is super repetitive. It's a lot of the same scenarios with the same characters dealing with the same stuff. It gets pretty boring after a while. Overall Palo Alto kind of sucks. I like the concept of taking two very different teenagers and showing their story from their perspective and how they interact with each other and all that, but a concept alone isn't enough to save an entire film. It's often poorly written, poorly acted, and boring. Sure the directing and some performances are saving graces, but they simply can't support the entire film. In the end I wouldn't recommend it.

r-pineiro24 I thought of writing an entire film review about teenagers, based on "Palo Alto," a "nepotic" film directed by granddaughter of Francis Ford Coppola and starring the son of the almost extinct Val Kilmer and a niece of Julia Roberts. I wanted to talk about the profound existential drama of adolescence and the post-war European communism during the sub-genus in the fifties, James Dean and Marlon Brando included. I wanted to comment on the 80 and the playful spirit of a world that was not going to nowhere, but survived. (Except films from Francis Ford Coppola, filled of that agonizing nature of the Cold War). I thought that this Palo Alto even serve to illustrate the times of nihilism exacerbated era of technology we live. He believed, by the way, in a kind of psychic return to the days of Nicholas Ray and troubled teens. But gentlemen, I confess: The little film of yore does not even to begin the warmest of the discussions.

Tori (torimorrison) Although the characters are in high school, this is not a typical "coming of age" movie. Each of the character's are struggling with their own personal demons, less tangible than the typical class bully or the hard to get cheerleader. They are filling their boredom or the lack of love Coppola alludes to by the parents who constantly talk on the phone, or play video games, and generally seem distracted, if well meaning. They are plagued with eruptions of emotion and no outlet, causing characters like Nat Wolff's to act recklessly, driving towards traffic on the left side of the road, in order to keep from feeling numb. There is a paradox of emotional numbness and simultaneous intense emotional turmoil that exists in adolescence- when Jack Kilmer's character accuses Emma Robert's character of not caring about anything, she responds by asserting that she cares too much about everything. These conflicting feelings of caring for nothing and everything at the same time cause the characters to act without purpose. They have sex without love. They smoke cigarettes. They self destruct.