Kezia Cole To give credit where it's due, "The Lifeguard" is a nicely shot, leisurely paced indie movie about growing older, growing up, and dealing with the changing pressures of "finding yourself" in a world that may often seem hollow and unsympathetic. The performances are mostly solid, with particularly decent efforts from Kristen Bell as 29-year-old disillusioned reporter Leigh, who moves from New York back to her childhood home in Connecticut, where she bunks with her parents, picks up her high school job as a lifeguard at the local pool, and generally attempts to revisit her adolescence, and Alex Schaffer as Matt, one of the trio of equally disillusioned teens Leigh and her friends fall in with over the course of the summer. I caught this movie on Netflix, so wasn't aware it had been billed as a comedy on release; a weird choice that may have hampered the film, as it contains almost zero comedic elements. It's more in the vein of "American Honey" or other movies that attempt to portray realistically flawed characters making dubious choices in an effort to reaffirm their own identities... and, at least for me, that's where "The Lifeguard" falls flat. My problems with this movie are chiefly to do with its horrendous double standards, its failure to engage with any of the issues it raises, and its stubborn refusal to have any of the characters show even an ounce of true self-awareness or growth. Each of the adult characters - Leigh, her high school friends Mel (Mamie Gummer) and Todd (Martin Starr), and Mel's husband John (Joshua Harto) - are painfully self-absorbed and seem to only parse the world in terms of how it affects them, perhaps best typified in the scene where Mel wails and frets over needing to be "free" and also nurses her anxiety about whether or not she could be a mother (note: not a good mother, just a mother). These might well be real and vivid concerns for a married 30-something with her own home, car, and career, but the script entirely deprives Mel of any subtlety whatsoever and she, like Leigh, merely comes over as a spoiled and self-obsessed brat; the feminine equivalent of a so-called manchild, who would be more at home poring over quotes about self-actualization on Instagram than living as a functional adult. Of course, there are many movies that focus on the emotional growth of a manchild, and many movies that attempt to make unlikeable characters interesting. "The Lifeguard" does neither, and it strays into somewhat disturbing territory with the depiction of Leigh's affair with 16-year-old Little Jason (David Lambert). For some reason, Leigh's sexual relationship with a minor almost exactly half her age is portrayed as equal, consenting, and harmless. The sex scenes are shot with focus on Leigh's enjoyment and also her romanticization of the relationship, even though at several points the movie goes out of its way to show us how young and vulnerable Jason is, particularly during the third act, with his raw emotional reaction to the loss of his friend Matt. As with every single event that occurs in this movie, Jason's breakdown serves only to further something Leigh perceives about herself, and she leaves him being comforted by his father while she does the only bit of vague adulting we ever see her do. The final scene she shares with him involves her giving him money and literally leaving him crying by the poolside. It's a sickening display of self-absorption that plays out while the audience is presumably supposed to be impressed at how Leigh (dressed for the first time in "grown-up" clothes, complete with high heels, in contrast to the swimsuits, tank tops and shorts Bell wears for most of the movie) has matured. In a movie - and there have been many - depicting an adult man's affair or infatuation with a teenage girl, either as a taboo attraction or a way to recapture his youth, the implicit imbalance of power in such a relationship is always apparent. Think of the scene in "American Beauty" where Lester, on the edge of an encounter with his teenage daughter's friend, backs away and ends up giving her fatherly advice: in that moment, the disturbing reality of the fantasy is brought home to him, and he recoils. Put bluntly, when men in movies pursue teenagers, they are portrayed - and seen by audiences - as predatory, sleazy dirtbags, or pathetic has-beens. By contrast, "The Lifeguard" portrays Leigh as a whimsical girl having a hot summer fling, and at no point assesses or questions her behaviour except in the most minimal way, placing the emphasis on Mel's concern that she should report the affair, or that she may lose her job at the school if it becomes public knowledge. To cap it off, the movie completely sidesteps any form of repercussion. Leigh leaves Connecticut to pick up her old life, and the relationship with Jason is swept under the rug, with he and his father both refusing to name names. During a scene between Mel and Jason's father at the school, he outright states that "getting laid" is sure to have no effect on his sixteen-year-old son, and he'll be fine. Perhaps this is the movie's way of questioning the endemic minimization of sexual abuse on boys when perpetrated by adult women; perhaps it's just another way for the main character to continue prancing through her charmed life without a single thing to worry about except the fact that she isn't a teenager any more. It's hard for me to list everything I hated about this movie and its characters. I disliked everything about Leigh from her selfishness to her poor cat ownership, and I hated the fact that the movie seems to condone her self-absorption, never forcing her out of her own introspection to deal with a wider world. The closest it came to this was in the relationship with her mother, where Leigh is apparently surprised that her parents have their own personalities, preferences, and lives. How she made it to nearly thirty while being so oblivious to the fact other humans are people too is mind-bending. There might be a thoughtful, relatable movie buried somewhere in "The Lifeguard" and, perhaps if the supporting characters had been fleshed out more, or Leigh had been given more of a challenging character arc, it would have been brought to the surface. Unfortunately, for me, this is one piece of self-indulgent rubbish that sinks like a stone.

DesiAnge The movie has its issues - the beginning is kind of strange, the characters are not developed well, as they could be...but still i liked the it because it has a spirit.The spirit of nostalgia. Going back to the childhood, the time when we where happy and light- hearted. The life is scary, the growing up could be frightening. The love story is extraordinary - a young man, almost a kid and a adult woman who is confused with her life. That love is a beautiful, impossible, elusive,passionate kind of love. I don't understand why this movie has so many negative revues and rates. I don't find anything wrong, scandalous,immoral or outrageous in it. OK she is older, but what? You could fall in love at any age! People in US consider the consent intercourse with 16-17 years old boy as something scandalous and almost a rape. But they don't find anything wrong when the 17-18 years old boys go to the American army to kill people.So you could go and kill people at the age of 17, but you must wait till 21 to buy a booze.Of course, if you have a relationship with an adult woman at age of 16 or 17 she must be put in jail for child abuse because you are minor:)))

Neddy Merrill Unfortunately movies about characters adrift and trying to find themselves don't make for good cinema. Kristen Bell's misguided millennial has returned home to pick up her glory days in high school by getting her old lifeguard gig back. Thewestchestarian imagines being a lifeguard at the same small municipal pool everyday must eventually get pretty old and in real life you wouldn't want to slog back through it again for love nor money. Once installed in the tall chair the movie is unclear about what to do with Kristen's character so it introduces others with problems that are at least more comparatively interesting. Her best friend is now an assistant principal whom her old school and her aging husband are trying to tress up with the bounds of responsibility. Her rebellion against real responsibility makes Bell's characters seems fairly inconsequential and thus not really movie-worthy. The very late 20 somethings hanging around - and in some cases doing much more - with the current crop of local teenagers does come across as sort of pervy and a little pathetic. It seems like there are less pedophillc ways to rebel against adulthood. In short, the great American millennial story has yet to be written and this certainly isn't it.

TxMike We found this one on Netflix streaming movies. We found it to be better than the IMDb rating would suggest. It is a mature theme, a 29-yr-old high achieving lady working in Manhattan, about to turn 30, and both work and relationships conspire to throw her into a dark place. Kristen Bell, who was actually about 32 during filming, is the main character, Leigh. We later find out she was class valedictorian some 12 years earlier, and none of her friends were surprised that she became an award-winning writer. But inside she was lost, and it seemed she just wanted to be a little girl again. The movie isn't clear about where it is set, but we know it was filmed around the Pittsburgh area, and at least one of the teenagers was wearing a Pittsburgh tee-shirt. So I'll go with that. But it is an attractive suburban type of community, one where you can walk a short distance and be in the woods.Leigh informs her parents that she will stay with them for a while. Aimless she decides to take a job she had as a teenager, lifeguard at the local pool. She meets some teen boys, about 16 and 17, and she instantly identifies with them. This confuses her good friend from high school, Mamie Gummer as Mel, who is now assistant principal at the school they graduated from. Plus Mel has her own set of issues, she and her husband seem to be trying to get pregnant, but she isn't sure she would be a good mom. She regresses also to some "teenage" behavior.The other key character is David Lambert as Little Jason, son of the pool maintenance man. (The character is 16 or 17, but Lambert was 19, almost 20 during filming.) He and Leigh seem to be kindred spirits, she helps him see the possibilities in life, while she sees him as the embodiment of the unfulfilled love life she thought she wanted.I thought this might be a light romantic comedy but it is far from that. It is about coming of age, but with a twist that the two 30-ish women had never really come of age. There are some pretty raw and explicit scenes depicting sex between a 29-yr-old woman and a 16-yr-old boy, which is shocking to most. I instantly found myself wondering what if it had been a 29-yr-old man with a 16-yr-old girl. It seems movies are more accepting of a teenage boy and an older woman, as in "The Summer of '42" and "Life According to Garp", just to cite a couple of others.It is hard to "rate" this movie, it isn't "enjoyable" in the usual sense but I found it to be very realistic, and it illustrates how navigating through life sometimes is very unclear. While Leigh was a writer, not a teacher, it seems virtually every week we read about a female teacher getting found out having an intimate relationship with one of her male students. The movie reflects real life.