The Lifeguard (2013)

Leigh's mother: "I can't go back in time with you."

By Liz W. Garcia
With Kristen Bell, Mamie Gummer, Martin Starr 

I've long been a fan of Kristen Bell's work, ever since her lead role in the detective television series Veronica Mars (2004-2007) and since then I've made a point of seeing her new films.

In The Lifeguard, the 29 year old Leigh leaves her job at a New York news agency to reconnect with her past, a time she felt she was truly happy. She moves back to the suburbs with her parents and takes a part time job as a life guard and reunites with her high school friends, Mel (now a vice principal at the high school Leigh and her graduated from) and Matt (a gay art curator working at a dead-end store) who have never moved away from the town they grew up in. Leigh's reappearance triggers a ripple in the community, as both Mel and Matt begin to reconsider the choices they made in their lives, and as Leigh begins to spend more and more time with Little Jason, a 16 year old boy studying in high school, who, like Leigh, does not know what he wants to do in life, the careless fun which Leigh wanted to re-experience begins to yield far darker results than she had ever anticipated.

At the outset the viewer thinks they are in for a fluffy romantic comedy--albeit one with slightly unorthodox characters. Kristen Bell plays Leigh to perfection, as a bubbly late twenties girl who never wants to grow up and is facing a quarter life crisis. It also brings to the forefront the rather problematic reversal of the usual sex scandals--as Leigh, nearing her thirties, embarks on a relationship with the sixteen year old Little Jason. While many reviewers blamed the film for showing the relationship in a romantic light instead of a disgusted one, I myself thought that it perfectly captured the sentiments the characters were feeling. You have a girl who wants to revisit her youth and when all possibilities were open to her, it seems almost natural that she feels drawn to a boy whose youth affords him any direction in life as he can choose.

I also enjoyed the lesser explored theme of what happens when one person has a "quarter-life" crisis--Leigh's friends were just as affected by her and I think this is important. It's true that people are often oblivious to the annoyances of their life, or rather accept them as something inevitable, and that it takes someone else to exhibit these frustrations and to make a move in order to for change to occur. As such, while this film was mostly a sort of coming-of-age for Leigh, it was similarly so for Leigh's mother and for her friends, as well.

The acting was convincing -- though weak at parts, at others it was capable of truly connecting with the audience. In this sense I felt that the film worked as a drama. The soundtrack was catchy, the visuals were crisp and understated. In short, it was an enjoyable and mildly thought provoking film. I would recommend.

66/100