Young thumbs

YOU KNOW your movie trailer is playing a tough crowd when about 10 seconds into the trailer for "Love Guru," as Jessica Alba first appears on screen, someone shouts out: "Love interest!" After the trailer is over, Gabriel Gutierrez, 15, grumbles about the film's stars: "Jessica Alba and Mike Myers -- she can't act, and he's not funny." To which, Hannah Wood, 15, responds: "Like she's really there for her acting."

When teenagers congregate to talk about summer movies, it's impossible to predict what they'll say, except that it will surely be acerbic, funny and knowing. Raised on Perez Hilton, schooled by the satirists at the Onion, they are full of a finely honed skepticism for Hollywood's attempts to bedazzle kids into seeing the latest crop of big summer comedies and superhero films.

Since teens are far more plugged into pop culture than any Hollywood marketer -- or for that matter any bleary-eyed newspaper columnist -- I've gotten into the habit of showing the summer movie trailers to a group of kids known as the Summer Movie Posse. Our eighth annual installment comprises seven 14- and 15-year-olds from the Oakwood School who belong to the true target audience for the annual deluge of special-effects extravaganzas that will dominate the multiplexes this summer.

A few highlights from their verdicts: Judd Apatow still rules. Adam Sandler is someone only your little brother would like. Morgan Freeman is considered much cooler than Shia LaBeouf or Cameron Diaz. Harrison Ford looks old, really old. "Speed Racer" looks like "Hot Wheels: The Movie." And Mike Myers is just not funny anymore.

Nothing much gets by them. After watching one too many trailers introduced by a booming-voiced narrator, Jeremy Katzenstein, 14, lowers his voice and ad-libs, in an announcer's portentous tone: "You go looking for a miracle, but then a miracle comes looking for you!"

After watching the trailer for "The Happening," which gives few clues to the story line of the upcoming M. Night Shyamalan thriller, Asher Kaplan, 14, remarks on how similar the trailer feels to the minimalist campaign Paramount used to sell "Cloverfield" this year, saying, "It feels like 'Cloverfield 2.' It's like -- 'We're not gonna tell you anything about the movie.' "

"Until you see it and are disappointed," chimes in Tristan Rodman, 14.