Double Feature: Lifeguard (1976) and The Lifeguard (2013)

My life hasn't turned out like I pictured.

In 1976's Lifeguard, Sam Elliott plays an early-thirties-something named Rick who wastes his days away as a beach lifeguard. His parents are disappointed, he has no interest in a real job, and his high school friends are simultaneously jealous of and amazed by his carefree attitude. Avoiding growing up, he spends his days having sex with underage girls and staring at the waves of the water. It's kind of dumb, but Sam Elliott is Sam Elliott so he gets away with it.

Rick's age stares him right back in the face when he starts training a new kid. He teaches him his beach bum ways, which of course includes saving people Baywatch-style and the ins and outs of this peculiar 9-5, but also how to pick up cute girls while staying out of trouble.

Trouble seems to find him in the form of seventeen-year-old Wendy, played by Kathleen Quinlan. She likes his age and experience, he tries to pretend that he doesn't like her age and inexperience. "Have you made love with many girls?" she asks him. "Yeah, a few," he says hesitantly. "Have you made love with many boys?"

"Just once. I didn't really like it, though. We didn't really know what we were doing."

"You got lots of time. A woman doesn't hit her prime till she's thirty."

"Yeah, by then I wanna be really good at it."

This is not the kind of interaction that would normally bother beefcake Rick, but because this is a movie, he soon receives an invite to his 15-year high school reunion. It must cross his mind that the girl he's talking to was but a toddler when he graduated high school and started this lifeguarding gig.

Well, it's not exactly a gig for him. He's made a career out of something that teenagers or college kids do to make a couple extra bucks in the summertime. When an old high school buddy offers him a seemingly lucrative Porsche salesman job, he has to admit to himself that he's not quite as fast or as strong as he used to be. Isn't it time to move on? Get with the real world?

It's a '70s flick, so it can be a little rough around the edges, but so can Sam Elliott. Rocking his signature stache, a golden tan, and those iconic lifeguard red short shorts, his sexiness somehow seems to outweigh any sort of creepiness or sadness. There's something so charming about a life spent soaking up rays surrounded by bikini-clad babes. His existential issues feel like an honest struggle, even if it's a struggle you're jealous of and might love to have.

In 2013's The Lifeguard, Kristen Bell plays an early-thirties-something named Leigh who wastes her days away as a pool lifeguard. She moves back in with her parents, can't seem to hold down a real job, and her high school friends are simultaneously jealous of and amazed by her carefree attitude. Avoiding growing up, she spends her days having sex with underage boys and staring at the still pool water. It's kind of dumb, but Kristen Bell is Kristen Bell so she gets away with it.

Sound familiar? Unlike Sam Elliott's Rick, Leigh actually had a "real job" at one point, working as a journalist. But when she's fed up with the job, largely due to the fact that she is her boss's mistress, she just packs up and leaves town. There's something that feels so attractive about that small-town life she used to live. No stakes, no bills, few worries. "Are you depressed?" her mom asks.

"No, not clinically," she responds. "My life hasn't turned out like I pictured."

If she simply goes back to earning minimum wage, tanning in the red one-piece and sunnies, and hissing her whistle at people, she can step right back into that carefree life. But she doesn't get the SoCal beach that Rick so obviously enjoys, her post is atop a lifeguard chair overlooking a crappy neighborhood pool in Connecticut. The twerpy kids don't listen and it quickly becomes much more alluring to sit around and smoke, cigs or pot, with the skateboarding teenagers. Soon, she starts having sex with sixteen-year-old Jason, played by David Lambert. "I'm sucking off his youth like a vampire," she tells an old friend.

But those friends don't understand her and she doesn't understand them. When Mel, played by Mamie Gummer, tells Leigh that she's pregnant, she responds, "Like, with a human baby?" Yes, a human baby, because she has plans and a future and a desire for more.

All that we really know about Leigh is that anything resembling real life has been too hard and she needs a break from it. But unlike Lifeguard, Kristen Bell’s character in The Lifeguard does see real-life consequences from this little-bit-older-than-quarter-life-crisis. Whether or not this dramedy earns those consequences is one thing (and it seems as though many folks online adamantly believe it does not earn them), but it's still an interesting character study about someone looking for their place in life.

Lifeguarding seems to be the perfect metaphor for such a story. Lots of time to think, to reflect, to imagine. It's a high-stakes job with a low-key lifestyle. It's attractive, but fleeting.

"Must get lonely, huh?" the car salesman asks Rick in Lifeguard.

"Ah, beats selling encyclopedias," he smirks.

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