Palo Alto

"Palo Alto" (2013 release; 98 min.) brings the story of a group of high school kids. As to movie opens, we see best buddies Fred (played by Nat Wolff) and Teddy (played by Jack Kilmer, yes son of Val--who also appears in the movie) sitting in the car in an empty parking lot. Fred eventually rams the car into a wall from short distance, freaking Teddy out. We also get to know April (played by Emma Roberts, yes Julie is her aunt), who is on the girls soccer team, coached by Mr. B. (played by James Franco). Soon a theme emerges: what most high school kids care about is to party, get wasted and smoke pot, and that's about it After one of those parties, Teddy, driving under the influence, hits another car. He barely avoids juve and must do 150 hrs. of community service in the local library. At this point we're a good 20 min. into the movie and to tell you more would spoil your viewing experience, you'll just have to see for yourself how it all plays out.

Couple of comments: first, this is the big screen directing debut of Gia Coppola, yes THAT Coppola. Francis Ford is her grandfather and Sofia is her aunt. Gia was a mere 25 years old when this movie was shot. You can't help but wonder at the parallel between this and "The Virgin Suicides", Sofia's debut (when she was herself only 26 or 27). Second, the movie is based on James Franco's book "Palo Alto Stories" of a few years ago. I have not read that collection of short stories, so I can't comment how close the movie has stuck (or not) to the original stories. Third, Jack Kilmer absolutely steals the movie with his performance of the vulnerable Teddy. We surely have not seen the last of him. And Emma Roberts of course confirms all the good things that we have seen of her before, although hopefully she won't be playing a 16 yr. old high school kid much longer (she's now 23). "Palo Alto" contains so many "big" and "promising" names, yet in the end fails to truly set itself apart from other "coming-of-age" movies. It's certainly not a 'bad' movie, but in the end it feels like the sums of the parts don't make up the whole.

I saw "Palo Alto" this weekend at the Lincoln Center Film Society in New York, and the matinée screening where I saw this at was strongly attended, somewhat to my surprise. Despite its flaws, "Palo Alto" is still worth checking out, be it in the theaters or eventually on DVD/Blu-ray.

"If you were in olden times, what would you do?" Fred (Nat Wolff)

If the ennui and aimlessness of teens, as depicted in Palo Alto, represents the upper-middle class's decline, then we all may be in trouble. The above question is answered about the universal life of teens throughout modern times: Things will be no different, and maybe worse. Writer/Director Gia Coppola captures the disaffection and confusion of late high schoolers in an affluent suburb while she eschews the basics of good story telling, like meaningful conflict and resolution.

The coming-of-age tale of burb loneliness has been told since the 60's. Yet, with cell phones to text each other, maybe these emotional wanderers are more connected and purposeful than I thought. It's just that the story too well mirrors their purposefulness.

Palo Alto captures the lost world of drug and sex-addled seniors who indulge too much and suffer the expected consequences of excess and conscience. April (Emma Roberts) appears to be the only virgin in the crew, a soccer player having a hackneyed illicit affair with her coach, Mr. B. (James Franco) but seemingly unrequited love for sweet artist Teddy (Jack Kilmer).The others lost in a fog of weed and useless sex like Teddy and Fred wander in the night doped up and hungry for meaning.

And that's all, folks. Like the lost souls of the story, the film wanders among the strands of James Franco's short stories looking for a common thread to bind the characters more than the typical stoner discursiveness and the serious limitations of suburbia. Look for Aunt Sofia's Bling Ring to get a better feel for true teen angst, disaffection, and lawlessness.

The best I can say is that Coppola shows the familial gift of mesmerizing compositions and lighting, promising the great patriarch Frances's gift for powerful storytelling. Right now, Gia Coppola gets the kids right, nails the mood, and will get the story in a few years.

As aimless as the teens it portrays, Palo Alto see's yet another Coppola enter into the movie making business, this time Gia, Francis's (The Godfather) granddaughter and Sophia's (Lost in Translation) niece who in adapting James Franco's collection of short stories of the same name has created an at brief times realistic and insightful look into modern day teenage hood yet stumbles in actually saying anything of merit in a tale that starts depressing and ends there to.

Palo Alto clearly wants to be a showcase for the Los Angeles brackets of teenagers, the type that party first and study later and the type that have fun by chopping down trees with chainsaws late at night. Palo Alto actually feels like more of a fever dream of a cautionary tale or look into this life as to be honest it never really connects on a level that feels wholly realistic. There type of films work best when scenarios and characters feel real or relatable and while Palo Alto can for brief moments do this, a majority of situations and players either do things that feel utterly ridiculous (like a lot of teens do, just not to this level) or downright unbelievable. This would largely stem from the source novel from Franco, who seems to make his business in being weird/alternate but Coppola shows enough here to suggest that he could've done more to make the material better.

What Coppola does succeed in is in her direction of her young cast, while supports Nat Wolff and Zoe Levin don't do a lot to suggest they've got a career ahead, with Wolff in particular an incredibly annoying presence (how his been cast in so many movies since this effort is beyond me), young leads Emma Roberts and son of Val, Jack Kilmer show a real talent in their field. Roberts has long been a talent to watch (and much more bearable than her relative Julia) and her portrayal of confused April is a great piece of work while Kilmer as similarly wondering Teddy suggests he may one day to achieve the success of his father, with hopefully his father's weight gaining fall. Author of the novel himself Mr. James Franco also makes an appearance in what is on face value an on screen version of himself as creepy older guy looking to gain a much younger girlfriend.

There are some nice touches to this film by Coppola, a keen eye for a nice shot makes you think she has a career ahead of her and some great lead turns by Roberts and Kilmer, but nothing could help such a cold and un-relatable piece of work ever become anything more than acceptable. We've been blessed over the years to have countless and memorable entries into the young teen/coming of age drama catalogue and with Palo Alto you're much better off to find one of these, instead of watching this instantly disposable offering.

2 Grand Theft Auto playing Val Kilmer's out of 5

Don't come looking for plot - our teen years didn't have one either. Like Dazed and Confused before it, Palo Alto throws us into the joys, pains, and emotions of the life of American-suburban adolescence. Though unlike its defacto predecessor, Palo Alto takes a look at this world through a softer, more elegant, more personal lens. The film bounces us around from character to character, all high school students in the titled town. Reckless parties, desperate sexual encounters, jealousies, weed, breaking things, sexually aggressive teachers (James Franco) and, of course, homework. It's all part of the world of Palo Alto. There is no rhyme or reason. Or is there? James Franco (whose book of short stories the film is based on) plays Mr. B, the high school soccer coach, tells his favorite player April that everything has a reason. Maybe he's right. You be the judge. Director Gia Coppola, in her first feature-length effort, works wonders at keeping the characters and the world of Palo Alto authentic. "Glee" exists in a land far, far away from here. Instead, we get an unfiltered look at what it takes to navigate the turbulence of adolescence and find our path to adulthood. It's a painful but beautiful thing.

"Palo Alto" has a lot of direct ancestors and even more godfathers. On the shared DNA side, we have, from Gia Coppola's grandfather Francis Ford, "The Outsiders"; from her aunt Sofia, the (very recent) "Bling Ring". George Lucas, Peter Bogdanovich, Gus Van Sant, and many others look on, no doubt benevolently, at the many echoes of (or direct quotations from) their work, while Larry Clark kind of peeks in from the wings, no doubt shaking his head over how the sexy parts never go all the way.

The sad news, I'm afraid, is that the sum does not reach the quality of the many appropriated parts.

Interestingly, it is above all Van Sant who seems to be channeled here. This is partly due to the cinematography of Autumn Durald, which echoes, but does not equal, the work that Harris Savides and others have done for Van Sant. The many tight shots of the talented young actors have, at their best, much of the empathy and meaning that Van Sant invests in even the slightest of his young cast members. But there is nothing in this film that can remotely touch even the most casual, off-hand exchanges of the opening moments of "Elephant", for example.

But Van Sant comes to mind above all because of the arrival here of Val Kilmer's son Jack, whose resemblance to the River Pheonix of "My Own Private Idaho" is startling. This cannot be coincidental: James Franco, the author of the source material of "Palo Alto" (and an actor in it), worked with Van Sant on a tribute to Phoenix, "My Own Private River", and the resemblance cannot have been missed as the younger Kilmer was being cast. In a film about teenagers, he alone (born in 1995) actually looks like one. (Though not as absurdly as in so many other American movies, all the other young actors look just a couple of crucial years older than the characters they are supposed to be playing.) And he feels like one, and projects complex emotions in ways that are attributable to one He is extraordinary, and required no help from the make-up department, I'm sure, to produce the growth of peach fuzz on his upper lip that appears in several of his scenes. (All credit to Coppola for letting it be.) I hope and trust that Uncle Gus is paying attention and will do something great with this talented kid before he grows too much older. (It should be noted, by the way, that Kilmer père plays a cameo here, as a step-parent grotesque who could have wandered in from a Judd Apatow movie. His brief, hammy sequences are embarrassingly out of synch with this film and should have been cut.)

Others are quite good, too, and Emma Roberts (niece of Julia), as the female lead, is more than that -- she is revealed here to be an extraordinary actress, perhaps even the next Scarlett Johannson. Too bad that she also, as mentioned, looks a few years too old for this particular role.Still, the camera captures her with real affection and sympathy. Oddly,though the budding romance between her character and Kilmer's is the central plot line of the movie (to the extent that there is one), neither actor is seen to best effect in their (few) actual scenes together.

Franco plays a girls' soccer coach with a dangerous glint in his eye quite well, though the camera (a recurring problem in this film) holds his reaction shots for too long, weakening rather than underlining his predatory smirk. The rest of the adults are negligible, and the other teens are more run of the mill young American actors.

Of the plot there is little to say: teenagers in yet another California town, left to their own devices by distracted adults, stumble around, get drunk and stoned out of their minds. Sex ensues, of course (rather prudishly portrayed, with everything below the belt taking place below the frame). Attractions and jealousies sprout, with some age-appropriate hints of sexual ambiguity. Friendships hit a brick wall. Something like true love seems in the end to be brewing.

The classics of the genre have all been made. This calling-card film shows Gia Coppola to have talent, and she no doubt will go on to do bigger and better things. One could question whether, had she not been a Coppola, this film would ever have been made, but that would be churlish, as it is in its way not bad at all and, at moments, is very good indeed. And we should all be grateful for its revelations of the younger Roberts and, especially, Kilmer, who should, by rights, head on from this to greater things in the hands of more seasoned directors. In this sense, "Palo Alto" might turn out to be "The Outsiders" of their generation: we saw them here first.