L.A. Times columnist Patrick Goldstein rounded up a few 13 and 14-year-olds and showed them some summer trailers. Here’s what they had to say about the totally bash-worthy Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End (Disney, 5.25):
Kid #1 (i.e., Ryan) said, “I know I’m going to have to see it, but I don’t think I’m going to like it. It really looks repetitive. But I guess I have to go.” Kid #2 (i.e., Adam) said, “It just looks horrible, so over the top, with one fight scene after another. I give it one point, mostly because Chow Yun-Fat is in it.” And Kid #3 (i.e., a girl named Simona), said, “We’re just tired of the whole series. It feels unnecessary. They just want our money.”
These kids are obviously very perceptive and iconoclastic. I also admire where they’re at spiritually. They’re hip to the horseshit and clearly sick of the same old posturing Gore Verbinski-Jerry Bruckheimer-Johnny Depp crap, and they don’t want to just march into the multiplexes like brainless monkeys and lay their money down without a reasonable prospect of seeing something they might actually like. They want something better, and who can blame them? But do they represent mainstream teens, or are they elitists of some kind? (They’d have to be a little bit picky or peculiar to know Goldstein in the first place…no?)