For teens to sit through a comedy about some 40-year-old guy’s midlife crisis, there’d better be laughs and a story worth watching. Alas, in City Slickers II there are dry stretches as wide as the Utah desert where it was shot.

P.S. FOR KIDS 13 AND UP: When he thinks he’s found Curly’s gold, Mitch does “the Walter Huston dance” – a silly kind of shuffle. He’s imitating a character from a great 1948 film called The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, about a group of men who hunt for gold in the Mexican mountains and act as slimy as people can get when money’s at stake. Rent the original black-and-white version. It’s a lot better than City Slickers II.

Speed

(R, 120 minutes)

Kids of high school age may think they’re too cool to be fazed by an action thriller about a careening bus that will explode if it drops below 50 mph. But wait till it’s over and they realize they’ve been sweating bullets for two hours while this slick and silly movie works its suspenseful magic.

Speed has surprisingly little (though fairly graphic) violence, and relatively long stretches between profanities. Parents who want to take kids under 15 should keep in mind, though, that Speed is still an intense and scary movie.

A mad bomber (Dennis Hopper, of course) wants money and revenge or he’s going to take everybody out on a bus he’s rigged to blow. They have to keep it cruising above 50 on the crowded Los Angeles freeway system while they figure out what to do. As the SWAT team terrorist expert, Keanu Reeves kicks butt, chews gum and proves himself an immensely likable big-time hero.

P.S. FOR KIDS 15 AND UP: After you’ve seen Speed, even though it’s incredibly intense, you know practically nothing about the characters.

Flintstones – redux

The Family Filmgoer has been at a loss to figure out why so many people are seeing this over-hyped bit of recycled TV. So she went back for a second look.

As before, the crowd was mighty subdued for long stretches of time.Intermittently kids giggled at the gimmicky Stone Age versions of modern gadgets. A couple of kids hummed the Flintstones song afterward.

But the bottom line: There’s not much for the kiddies until The Lion King opens.

Jane Horwitz reviews movies for The Washington Post and other publications.