Reviews

I wanted to give Gia a chance. I thought that perhaps she isn't as tactless and vain as her aunt Sofia. My optimism was ill placed. Gia is par for the course.

The existence of this film is as definitively a case of sheer nepotism as anything since . . . well, The Virgin Suicides. At least Virgin Suicides was an arguably interesting failure. There is literally not one original concept, idea, thought, or even image contained within Palo Alto. I haven't read whatever it is that James Franco wrote (that this movie is based on), but it must be excruciatingly, embarrassingly bad.

I was tricked into giving this film a look after seeing a well edited preview. With all due respect to all the people who worked on this thing, it is absolutely horrible. To be fair, there are approximately three to four well framed pieces of cinematography. Other than that, this is utter garbage. The filmmaker 'gazes' mercilessly at his fifteen year old protagonist from beginning (the film literally opens with her naked in a bath tub) to end. The metaphors are obvious and clunky. The story the same 'got to get out of this boring town' cliché that we've all seen ninety six times already. It is essentially straight forward, artless, misanthropy. Pretty much every thing about this film is absolutely embarrassing. Whoever at Sundance decided to insure the making of this film should be promptly fired.

The movie is still fun, but when people throw out "best movie ever" in every other review I tend to get a little more critical than I might otherwise. It all hinges on the pig's blood. Having just watched it, I can say for sure that there is no way the 'Chris' and/or Travolta character would have even known that Carrie was going to the prom when they initially decide to get the blood. It seems to me to be a glaring writing flaw given her being all 'social outcasty'. Why would they assume she'd be going? It is doubly noticeable given the fact that the gym teacher explicitly says at one point that you can't go to the prom if you don't have a date. It would not seem a safe bet for them to make that she would go at all. You would think it would be a given that they would assume she definitely wouldn't be going, being such a supposed 'loser' and all in their eyes. In general, the pacing and structure of the film suggest it was a bit of oblivious film making, like it hadn't really occurred to de Palma to establish nancy allen and travolta's knowledge of her going to the prom. Anyways, I really like the film, but this part of it was a bit irritating.

Also, why would nancy allen try to run her over when she does? Why would someone assume Carrie had used telekinesis? It is hilarious when you think about it. Of course, we as audience members know that is what happened at the prom, but how would they have known it was Carrie that did it? Did she just think; "oh, must have been Carrie using good ol' telekinesis to murder off all our friends, not just some random electrical calamity. I'll run her over with my fancy red sports car"?