54
Metascore
6 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 75TV Guide MagazineTV Guide MagazineA 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.
- 60Time OutTime OutA 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.
- 60NewsweekNewsweekThe 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]
- 60The New YorkerPauline KaelThe New YorkerPauline KaelWell 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.
- 50The New York TimesVincent CanbyThe New York TimesVincent CanbyAs a film, Lifeguard is romantic twaddle, but as sociology it's a spontaneous assault on a very American way of life.
- 50An 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.