Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

Blistering performances.

This is a very pleasant movie without a lot of sex and violence. It concerns a man in his 30's who is uncertain which direction his life should go after being a lifeguard since high school. At his high school reunion fifteen years later he begins to wonder where to go. A nomadic woman on the beach wants him and his former flame in high school wants him back in her life. Look for Jimmy Van Patten and Parker Stevenson starting to gear up their careers back then. An unexpected outcome and overall good movie that makes all of us wonder about our purpose out there in life. Shot around Hermosa Beach in the wonderful summer of '75. Sit back and enjoy it.

Torrance, California lifeguard Sam Elliott (as Rick "Ricky" Carlson) starts to feel his advancing years, after receiving an invitation to his Del Mar High School "Class of 1960" fifteen year reunion. Tanned, handsome and hairy, Mr. Elliott keeps up with the young and enjoys pleasing different women. He's a stud in the shack, but avoids commitment. Arriving on the beach, cute wavy-haired student Parker Stevenson (as Chris Randall) receives instruction in life-guarding and becomes Elliott's partner. They pontificate about how often aroused Steve Burns (as Harold) masturbates. The horny lad is called "Machine Gun" because he "holds the international record for jerking off." After the scene with topless stewardess Sharon Clark (as Tina), he'll have company... Both Elliott and Mr. Stevenson contemplate sex with mature but underage Kathleen Quinlan (as Wendy). Stevenson would do her. However, Elliott doesn't want to risk the statutory rape complications. Still, Ms. Quinlan is determined to get it on with Elliott, and won't take no for an answer. Also making the beach scene is Elliott's old school chum Stephen Young (as Larry), who encourages his reluctant pal not only to attend his high school reunion, but also join to him as a Porsche salesman. At the reunion, Elliott meets still attractive art gallery hostess Anne Archer (as Cathy) and thinks about giving up his lifeguard duties for a more socially respectable lifestyle. With more realistic situations and a cool cast, "Lifeguard" arouses new interest in beach movies.******* Lifeguard (7/23/76) Daniel Petrie ~ Sam Elliott, Kathleen Quinlan, Anne Archer, Parker Stevenson

Is life-guarding a grown-up job? What does it mean to be a grownup, anyway? Who decides how people should spend their lives?These are among the questions examined in this beautifully written character study of a man who has decisions to make.They're not issues that will change the world, but the kind of small decisions we wrestle with every day. What is really important? Why do we do what we do? Who influences how we behave? Should we conform because that's what people want of us?I remember once in TV Guide an ad that showed a buffed-out Sam Elliott with the caption, "He's every woman's dream--Lifeguard!" But this film has nothing to do with looks, and everything to do with character. It's a terrific piece of work, ringing true in scene after scene.

Saw this when it came out and, though I never had the leisure to share as much beach time as some of the characters in this film, I did know some of the surf-and-sand denizens of the beaches from Malibu south to San Diego back in the 1970's. I thought this film was a not inaccurate glimpse of what that sun-kissed lifestyle was all about. Sam Elliott was well cast as a lifeguard a few years older than the average athlete who perched on those observation stations, looking out at the Pacific's frequently treacherous waves. He looked the part and had the depth needed to make his character's less-than-monumental struggles to come to grips with his life and his career choice about as convincing as any actor probably could. With some fallow periods in the years since, Sam has continued to work quite steadily, though I've often wished he wasn't so often confined to Western roles. (What would he have done without Ted Turner and TNT and all those made-for-TV Western sagas?) With that distinctively macho growl of his, there's no mistaking who's doing a voice-over for one of the commercials he's done. I've always felt that his speaking voice has been his unique asset as an actor, not to mention the awesome mustache he frequently sports. "Lifeguard" is worth a look if you want a glimpse of southern California before it became impossibly overcrowded and overbuilt...when it was still a semi-paradise for the young and feckless.