Synopsis
Rick is a Los Angeles County lifeguard who is in his thirties. At his 15-year high school reunion, he sees his old girlfriend who is now a divorced mother. After falling in love with her, Rick considers changing his career and lifestyle.
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Cast
- Sam ElliottRick Carlson
- Stephen YoungLarry
- Anne ArcherCathy
- Parker StevensonChris Randall
- Kathleen QuinlanWendy
- Sharon ClarkTina
- Steve BurnsMachine Gun
- Lenka PetersonMrs. Carlson
- George D. WallaceMr. Carlson
- Paul KentJack Gilmore
Recommendations
- 75
TV Guide Magazine
A sensitive, thought-provoking story involving a man forced to look at himself as youth gives way to middle age. Elliott is outstanding as the title character, an old-timer in the profession at age 30. - 60
Time Out
A film that can narrow choices down to making a million as a car salesman, or drifting with alternate complacency and anxiety into middle-age as a superannuated beach bum, has something going for it in the way of cumulative obsessiveness. - 60
Newsweek
The hinge of Lifeguard's almost nonexistent plot is whether or not Rick will decide to give up his beach whistle for a briefcase. But the film is also extremely well acted by a cast of little-known players who deserve to go on to better things. [02 Aug 1976, p.78] - 60
The New Yorker
Well thought out and with a feeling for ordinary American talk, but too mechanical, too blandly sensitive, too cool to be popular; it's the sort of small-scale picture that's a drag in a theatre but shines on Home Box Office. - 50
The New York Times
As a film, Lifeguard is romantic twaddle, but as sociology it's a spontaneous assault on a very American way of life. - 50
Variety
An unsatisfying film, of uncertain focus on a 30-ish guy who doesn't yet seem to know what he wants. Script takes Sam Elliott through another Southern California beach summer as a career lifeguard, encountering the usual string of offbeat characters found in the type of made-for-TV feature which this project resembles.
