There's no audience for this movie.

I'm 62. Saw it today - only.one other person in and he was older than me!

I agree. I knew this movie was doomed for failure when I first heard about it. I remember thinking, "Whose gonna go see this." I went to see this movie because my 14yr-old niece wanted me to take her. She likes musicals. But there's not enough of her kind to make this movie float, and not enough old-heads that wanna go see it.

Lots of dumb generalizations.

I saw it today. I never ever thought I would say this but, this movie is BETTER than the original. Ansel is the most glorious Tony and this young actress puts Natalie Wood to shame as Maria. The actor who played Bernardo is awesome as are many of the ancillary actors.

I recognize several dancers from So You Think You Can Dance, Jess LoProtto being one of them. The dancing in this is far superior to the original. I'm seeing it again in two days and this time I'm taking my husband to see it.

I think about this topic a lot. Of how little people seem to know about the history of pop culture. It seems so odd and kinda depressing to me. Because, when you think about it, this is probably the first generation who grew up not knowing who Lucille Ball was since I Love Lucy first came out. Because from the moment in premiered up until around the early 2000's, we all only had a limited amount of channels to choose from. And we were all forced to watch the classics due simply to having no other option but old reruns sometimes. I remember, as a kid, thinking it was kinda interesting that -- at least when it came to these old shows -- every generation of my family was on the same page. We all knew what "One of these days, to the moon!" meant, or who Meathead was, and we all knew that two thumbs up and a "Heyyyyy" was in reference to the Fonz. I wasn't even born when these things aired. But they were all nevertheless one of pretty much everyone's (nationwide, if not around the globe) few shared, fun commonalities. Regardless of age, race, politics, or where you were from.

As great as it is to have a plethora of choices that you can access at any point, it feels almost pointless if you've got no good direction on which things to pay attention to and learn about. It's like having a high IQ but having no teachers to guide you on how to think. We've got no Siskel and Ebert that we're all simultaneously watching, telling us a weekly lineup of all the new good movies that are out. We've got no TV series that everyone is watching at the same time and talking about (Game of Thrones was the last thing we got close to that with, I think). It's all very isolating. Like we're all living in our own individual customized bubbles, no longer sharing anything together (on such a large scale) anymore.

I know this is all just a big digression having nothing to do with West Side Story, but your post got me thinking about it, haha. Sorry.

What's really scary about this generation is I've seen several instances of kids around age 10 who can't communicate. I first thought they were taught not to talk around strangers but then I ran into a woman at a store, we struck up a conversation(haha) and then she brought up on her own that kids can't talk nowadays, probably because their parents let tablets, smartphones act as their babysitters.

Entertainment options? All the music sounds the same. It's all crap if you ask me. At least West Side Story sounds like music and not something from outer space.

This is more about education. "West Side Story" is a classic and it should be taught in high school drama, if not English.

Obviously a 19 year old will have no hands-on familiarity with cultural items of the past. That's why we have schools. Cabbage Patch dolls are something I wouldn't expect or want schools to teach about. They were godawful ugly. But important plays in history? That's part of a basic education in literature.