Meet the deciders

WHEN the air is thick with the acrid smell of car chases, fiery explosions, ear-splitting music, bodies hurtling through space, nubile hotties, menacing bad guys and -- did we mention lots of car chases? -- you know the summer movie season is upon us. It’s a time when everyone, starting with the pundits of the showbiz press, feels obligated to make summer box-office prognostications, which -- surprise -- end up offering a hefty dose of behind-the-curve conventional wisdom.

Entertainment Weekly picked “Superman Returns” as the summer’s biggest hit, with “Mission: Impossible III” and “X-Men: The Last Stand” in the place-and-show slots. Premiere magazine went with “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest” at No. 1, with “Superman Returns” and “Cars” right behind. At HSX.com, where films are listed like Nasdaq stocks, the leader last week was “The Da Vinci Code,” valued at $225.59. Inside the industry, I’ve been getting similar choices in recent days, with “Pirates,” “Da Vinci” and “X-Men” leading the pack.

But since most summer movies are made for teenagers, not armchair adult prognosticators, I’ve gotten in the habit of going right to the source for my predictions. With that in mind, I recently convened the sixth annual Summer Movie Posse, at which a group of 10 high school kids dissected 13 trailers from the summer’s youth-oriented films.

In the past, the posse has been made up of teenagers from my Westside neighborhood. But this year’s group -- five guys and five girls -- is from San Fernando High, a largely Latino school in San Fernando. (A big shout-out to Lori E. Pike, an English teacher at the school, who helped assemble the group.) The kids, who range in age from 15 to 17, say they see an average of three movies a month in the summer. According to national studios, this is nearly one movie a month more than their non-Latino counterparts.

Movie marketers say that Latino youths are especially loyal fans of action and horror films. But judging from the response of the San Fernando High students, their favorite stars are pretty much the same as any kids’, a comedy-centric list headed by Jim Carrey, Adam Sandler, Owen Wilson, Jack Black and Keira Knightley. They also have a somewhat surprising affection for oldsters like Tom Hanks, whom one of them referred to as “Mr. Oscar.” When I mentioned Tom Cruise, the silence was deafening. The only time I sensed a real culture gap was in their willingness to openly discuss religion, an instant conversation killer with Westside teens. It’s possible that they also had a special interest in “Nacho Libre,” a Jack Black comedy about a Mexican monk who becomes a wrestler, but the film is clearly geared toward young moviegoers everywhere.

The one thing all teenagers share is an alert eye for new trends -- they’re the ultimate early adopters. If you’re fascinated by the quicksilver shifts in pop culture, the posse is often an accurate barometer for teen tastes. Will Ferrell and Black were big favorites with past posses long before they became big stars, and Ferrell scored big again this year with “Taladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby.” Last year’s group relentlessly trashed Lindsay Lohan well before her summer film, “Herbie: Fully Loaded,” failed to launch at the box office. Their prognostications, simply based on a two-minute trailer, usually stand up nicely to scrutiny a year later -- certainly compared to most media professionals.

Last year’s panel, for instance, had five bona fide hits in their top six picks, with “Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith” and “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” getting the highest scores. Their least favorite trailers -- “Herbie,” “XXX: State of the Union” and “Bewitched” -- were all under-performers. They have blind spots: Last year’s panel loved “Lords of Dogtown,” which bombed, and they were cool to the trailer for “War of the Worlds,” which was a huge hit.

Echoing a pattern that first emerged last year, the posse was clearly weary of being sold retread ideas. This bodes poorly for a film like “Miami Vice” that despite having two big stars has no particular resonance for them, or “Superman Returns,” which had little of the appeal of other Marvel Comics films but did inspire a spirited debate over Brandon Routh’s outfit.

The three top-scoring films were all from original scripts, earning props for having premises that felt fresh or original. As Somitra Butalia, 16, said of “Click”: “It looks interesting because it’s funny, but mostly because it has a new story -- it’s something I’ve never seen before.” Although they are supposed to be fans of scary movies, the one pure horror film in the mix, “See No Evil,” was a flop with the group, even though the boys all recognized Kane, a wrestling star who has a big role in the movie. The girls were unimpressed. “I thought it was more mean than scary,” said Nohemi Rosales, 17. “I like the element of surprise, but I don’t want to see so much blood.”

This summer, a number of studios have kept costs down by skimping on star power, hoping concept alone will sell the film. But they may have skimped too much. The posse was unimpressed. They had no idea who the leads were in “The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift” or “Accepted,” an “American Pie”-style comedy. They also had a lukewarm reaction to “Poseidon,” which only had one actor in the entire ensemble -- Kurt Russell -- whom they recognized.

Here are highlights from their discussion. If there was any doubt that “The Da Vinci Code” had multigenerational appeal, just listen to Markar Aghajanian, 15, who admitted that he wasn’t sure whether he was interested in the film, but “I guess I’d go with my parents because it’s about religion and they’re pretty religious, so it would be something we could do together.” (See accompanying box for the posse’s grades.)

‘Pirates of the Caribbean’

Nohemi: “Johnny’s my man. Just for him, I’d see this. It’s not so much the trailer itself -- it didn’t make me go, ‘Oh, they’re going to die’ or ‘They’re funny.’ It’s just that Johnny Depp is that character. He doesn’t just play a pirate. He is one.”

Jose Flores, 15: “I’d go because of Keira Knightley. Ever since ‘King Arthur,’ she’s been the one for me. She has that pretty-girl look, but her attitude is, like, she’s going to hurt you too. I mean, I even went to see ‘Pride & Prejudice’ to see her.”

‘Nacho Libre’

Nohemi: “It’s funny, I admit it. But I wouldn’t go spend my money on something so dumb. Although I like the actress [Ana de la Reguera] playing the nun. I was surprised to see her -- she’s from [a series on] Telemundo.”

Julisa Chavez, 16: “You have to admit, it’s a new kind of story. You’ve never seen monks wrestling before or Jack Black trying to seduce a nun. That is really funny.”

Nohemi: “But it makes religion seem ridiculous, which isn’t so funny.”

Jaime Robles Jr., 16: “The story is interesting, but the 19th century seems really old. It would be better if it was set today, when it wasn’t so far away.”

‘X-Men: The Last Stand’

Richard Rodriguez, 16: “The first movie was the best so far, but I want to see this one because the title makes it seem like something really bad is going to happen and I wouldn’t want to miss that.”

Markar: “I love anything Marvel does. If you like stories with action and imagination, you have to like Marvel movies.”

Jose: “It’s good to have someone new like Vinnie Jones, who’s a serious actor so you know he can handle a strong role. The ‘X Men’ movies make you think. With all the scientific advances going on now, you can imagine people becoming mutants, like in the movie. It makes you think: What would life be like? Is that something you’d want to be?”

‘Superman Returns’

Jose: “I’m not happy with the costume. He’s Superman, but he has this tiny little ‘S.’ You can barely see it. And the costume is so bright -- it looks cartoonish. The Spider-Man and X-Men costumes are darker and look much cooler.”

Nohemi: “The costume doesn’t matter. It’s who plays the role, and this guy looks like Superman.”

Jose: “Compared to Spider-Man or Batman, the Superman story is lame. It doesn’t have the great villains.

Nohemi: “Hello? Kryptonite? That’s the monster -- that’s what almost kills him.”

Markar: “My problem is that there have been so many Superman stories that it’s hard to imagine this one being very interesting. Just leave the old movies alone.”

“The Big Picture” runs each Tuesday in Calendar. If you have questions or criticism, e-mail patrick.goldstein @latimes.com.

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

What clicks with teenagers

Here’s how the Summer Movie Posse rated 13 of the trailers for some of the summer’s most anticipated films. Each trailer was graded on a 1-to-10 scale, with the highest possible score being 100.

“Taladega Nights: The Ballad

of Ricky Bobby”...93

“Click”...88

“Nacho Libre”...85

“X-Men: The Last Stand”...81

“The Da Vinci Code”...80

“Pirates of the Caribbean:

Dead Man’s Chest”...78

“Cars”...77

“Accepted”...75

“Poseidon”...74

“The Fast and the Furious:

Tokyo Drift”...73

“Superman Returns”...71

“Miami Vice”...69

“See No Evil”...54